Some (not all) emails disappearing / deleting themselves from folders in the Mail app on iPhone 4S

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Some (not all) emails disappearing / deleting themselves from folders in the Mail app on iPhone 4S

I am having an issue with some of my emails disappearing on my iPhone 4S and I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar issues and might offer a solution? I have three email accounts on my iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (of which include my iCloud @mac.com and Yahoo!) and all are set up as IMAP so that I can be sure both devices remain in sync at all times. The issue occurs when I go into any of my archive email folders, in any one of my three email accounts and let the iPhone sync with the server so that it is up-to-date. Sometimes - not everytime - I will watch as one of my most recent emails that is cached on the phone suddenly vanishes as it pulls down the rest of the emails archived in that folder. As soon as that email vanishes, it will then automatically remove it from the server (being that it is IMAP) and that email is then gone for good. It has not been moved to trash or any other folder because I can subsequently log into Yahoo! mail for instance and do a complete search for it and it won't find it at all. At first I thought it was my fat thumb (!!!) that had acidentally hit delete on the email but it is happening around twice a week and it has only happened since getting my iPhone 4S. I have contacted Apple support by phone and they suggested completely wiping the phone and restoring from backup, of which I have done. I have changed various settings such as showing 50 recent messages rather than 1000, turing on "organize messages by thread" and "ask before deleting" and trying that for a week but none of that has helped. I have a feeling this is an iOS5 issue rather than a hardware issue because my iPad 2 has started to do the same thing and it never did it before I upgraded to iOS5. Nor did my old iPhone 3GS that I had for two years. I am losing important emails and I'm getting to the stage of thinking about never opening the Mail app on either device for fear of losing any more important emails. I'm considering resorting to logging into Yahoo! and iCloud webmail via Safari instead which is a bit of a pain. Very sorry for the long message but thought i'd best be as thorough as possible. If any of you guys have had similar issues, or if you have any suggestions please feel free to chime in. Many thanks.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Nov 28, 2011 12:55 PM

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Answer 1

jbuege

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Nov 29, 2011 7:29 AM in response to bjg1804

I've been having the same problem since installilng iOS5 on my iPad2. Yesterday I watched a whole archived email folder disappear in front of my eyes. This morning, the same thing happened with another folder, except this time it was only the most very recent emails that disappeared (about 5). Everything previous to August stayed archived.

Any suggestions as to why this is happening would be greatly appreciated! I'm very wary of opening any archived folders from my iPad until I can resolve this.

Thanks!

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Answer 2

Dec 6, 2011 2:04 AM in response to jbuege

I am still having this issue. I spent 45 minutes at the Genius Bar and they were completely unhelpful. It seems to be an apple problems with IOS5 but I have not seen a solution. Does anyone have one?

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Answer 3

moupas

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Dec 6, 2011 12:01 PM in response to bjg1804

Since I upgraded to iOS5 I lost numerous emails not knowing why. Reading this thread and correlating with my own experiences, including one just today, I am convinced that this is a bug with iOS5 sync with Yahoo. This is highly disconcerting and I wonder what Apple is doing about it.

I did lose critical emails with highly important information in them! This is causing significant burden on me.

Hello, Apple!

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Answer 4

qaforum

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Dec 7, 2011 3:23 AM in response to bjg1804

Thanks for posting this I'm on IOS 5 on my iphone 4 and in Yahoo exactly the same thing happen to me yesterday an email just dissapeared as I was loading the folder... I feel Apple need to give free technical phone support for errors occuring due to their systems.. Any solutions pls?

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Answer 5

rkat52a

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Dec 8, 2011 10:51 AM in response to bjg1804

Same issue here---noticed this about 3 days ago.......using iPad2 with IOS 5. Emails disappeared from folders---actually saw some emails disappear right in front of me when I checked the folder and as the iPad2 was sync'ing up "checking mail" I saw the headers and then poof, they were gone---nowhere to be found (Trash, Spam...etc.). All the random emails that have vanished have been saved since Sep 2011 through >? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

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Answer 6

s2linda

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Dec 8, 2011 2:36 PM in response to bjg1804

You have to go to mails settings and in 'days to sync' set it to no limit.

Worked for me.

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Answer 7

Dec 8, 2011 5:56 PM in response to s2linda

I apologize but can you be more specific. I don't seem to have that setting on my IPHONE or IPAD under messages?

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Answer 8

Dec 8, 2011 6:21 PM in response to bjg1804

This explains a lot...it has happened with my Hotmail account also.

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Answer 9

moupas

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Dec 10, 2011 4:49 PM in response to bjg1804

Will Apple do anything about it here? Someone from Apple monitoring this issue at all? This is ridiculous and totally unacceptable. My opinion on the iPad2 plummeted.

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Answer 10

Mil_Prep

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Dec 12, 2011 7:09 PM in response to heatherfromriverside

Hi,

I was having the same issue until just recently. I did what 'S2Linda' suggested and it worked. But I'll expand on it to better explain and see if it fixes your issues too.

On your Iphone:

1. Go to Settings

2. Go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars

3. Select your account (be it Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail etc..)

4. Scroll down to where it says "Mail Days to Sync"

5. Select it and choose "No Limit"

Wait a few mintues or longer and maybe even restart your Iphone, and then go back into your mail and see if your emails have returned. This worked for me so I'm hoping it will solve your problems too.

Good Luck!

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Answer 11

bjg1804 Author

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Dec 14, 2011 10:47 AM in response to Mil_Prep

Thanks to everyone for their replies - I thought that it was just me with this issue but clearly not. Also thank you to Mil_Prep and S2Linda's suggestions, unfortunately all three of my email accounts do not have a "Mail Days To Sync" option - I believe that this option only appears in Mail settings if the account is an exchange email account. Even if I was able to adjust the time period of emails to sync, I don't think that it would help because the email(s) that are going missing can be as recent as one day old, leaving all my earlier emails in the same folder intact - some of which can go back to the year 2002 for instance. I am still convinced that it is a bug with headers in iOS5. Last week I even had a related problem where I had a new email merge with an old email. The senders email address, subject title and date remained the same but the body of the text was replaced with an old email from 2006! Very odd....

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Answer 12

s2linda

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Dec 14, 2011 10:54 AM in response to bjg1804

Book an appointment with the genius bar? They solve everything. Get Your phone replaced or wait for next update?

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Answer 13

jbuege

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Dec 14, 2011 10:59 AM in response to s2linda

I actually spent time at the Genius bar, and they were at a loss. A supervisor even followed up with me later and couldn't do anything. Like the previous commenter, I don't have a Mail Days to Sync option. If anyone has other ideas, I'd love to hear them!

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Answer 14

Dec 14, 2011 3:30 PM in response to bjg1804

I had the same problem. So after spending an hour or two tweeking everything, I think I found out a solution, at least for me. Go to

1. Settings

2. Mail, contacts, calendars

3. select "Fetch New Data"

4. Turn Push to "off"

Doing that stopped deleting old emails. I always just manually downloaded my emails, so I don't know if this will work for people who want their email the instant its received...

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Answer 15

Dec 14, 2011 3:37 PM in response to DrSharkey

Never mind. It's got to be an iOS5 issue. Cause now it's deleting everything again. 😕

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