How to transfer emails to a new iPhone? (POP3)

Apple says it's easy to upgrade because you can backup your apps and data from your old iphone and restore to a new one. It seems incredible that (1) the backup doesn't include emails, and (2) Apple gives no warning of #1.

This has nothing to do with POP3 or IMAP. If emails are data stored on the phone, they should be backed up and restored or there should be a VERY BIG WARNING. Well, what there really should be is a backup and restore of the email files. Can you imagine the uproar if a commercial program for backup (or even Windows Backup) just sort of skipped over email files and you didn't find out until your machine crashed and your restore had no emails?

I just did a backup of a 4s and restore to a 5s tonight. I didn't see any warning and was really surprised to see I had all my email accounts restored but none of the emails.

I couldn't agree more! With people today carrying phones for just about everything it is very logical to assume a backup would include all existing mail folders and content. I just upgraded from a 5 to 6 only to encounter your exact situation. Years of mail sent from my iphone is not on my new phone.

It should be extremely easy for Apple to incorporate this feature into the iphone backup. Grabbing those folders would be no different that grabbing music folder content or notes or the like. It would certainly be more useful that an update for a few new emoji's ! Of course unless the fanboys at Apple think it is a useful feature we the consumers will continue to get the short end of the stick. I for one would like to see this in the next iOS update!!!!!

scroobyplex wrote:

I see. So this was just a logical conclusion with iOS 7 offering "Mail" in iCloud settings, while contacts, calendar and other data are sync'ed across devices. Guess iOS is not that logical.

Mail in the iCloud settings is for iCloud mail. I.E., *********@icloud.com.

Just like if you go to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendars, all of the individual accounts have that same option. You can turn mail on or off for each account, if it is an available option.

Turning on 'Mail' for iCloud is like turning on 'Mail' for Gmail or Ymail or Hotmail. It only affects that individual account, no others.

iCloud has no direct control over other accounts, just like other accounts have no control over iCloud.

Next time, if you are not 100% sure of the answer, and just offering a 'logical conclusion', either test your 'theory' first before providing it as a solution, or at the least, qualify your contribution as a 'guess' and an 'unconfirmed theory'.

It's perectly logical that one sync account will not have control or influence over another sync account. Otherwise, that would defeat the purpose of having separate accounts.

Please note that if you have all the emails you want located on a PC using Outlook that this can be done. You have to work with someone that has an actual email server such as exchange (because you have to get away form Pop services for a moment). You have them create a new account for you (your only going to use this to move emails not actually send any so any email address domain they can setup will work). You will export all the emails using Outlook on your PC into a pst, you add the new Exchange email account onto your Outlook PC and then import all your emails into that account. Now you have your emails on an exchange server and add that account to your iPhone. You sync all those emails to your iPhone and then "move" the emails from this new exchange account into your current Pop account on your iPhone. For help on how to move use this link : https://www.imore.com/how-move-messages-your-iphone-and-ipad Your all done! If you need further help please feel free to contact me. Thanks

Supposing you already got the iPhone 4, which still is set up and running and containing the mails, just cloud-sync the mails across all your devices (in this case two iPhones) and then you can reset the iPhone 4.

There is not a way when it comes to POP mail, unless the mail is still on the server. If the mail is still in the inbox on the server, it will show up on the new device when you create the mail account on the new phone. If the iPhone is the only place that you have stored the mail, you will have to send those mails to yourself to recover them. Mail with a POP account is normally stored on the local device and could not be moved any other way.

Sorry scoobyplex... no scrooby snax for you. That's not how it works. You can't "cloud-sync" email messages across devices at all... Not when they come from a pop3 server as described...

To the OP. You've discovered one of the pitfalls of using POP3. If you don't want to switch to IMAP, that's up to you, but you're going to continue to have problems if you don't. About the only real choice you have is to forward the messages to yourself from your PC AFTER you set up the new phone. Be careful to shut off the option in the mail client on your PC to delete messages after downloading while you're doing this or you're likely to delete them as fast as you can send them (before they have a chance to download to the phone).

I see. So this was just a logical conclusion with iOS 7 offering "Mail" in iCloud settings, while contacts, calendar and other data are sync'ed across devices. Guess iOS is not that logical.

The OP is not using an iCloud email account... I guess you missed that part.

Problem is, everywhere it says "you can sync your mail". No, I can't. Why would I want to use icloud.com as another mail account? The goal of syncing mails would be to sync the actual mail files, so I have access to them on every iDevice, no matter if all iDevices are set up for mail account. Along with the mails, iOS could store information if a mail was changed, sent, moved, marked as read etc., upload this information to the cloud, so that other devices can fetch it and apply. Could be that easy.

TJBUSMC1973 wrote:

Next time, if you are not 100% sure of the answer, and just offering a 'logical conclusion', either test your 'theory' first before providing it as a solution, or at the least, qualify your contribution as a 'guess' and an 'unconfirmed theory'.

Suggestion, not solution. Don't confuse the words.

Here's a suggestion for you... Try reading the manual.

That'd be the manual of iOS 7, which doesn't exist. Same like with Windows, it also has no manual, only a very basic help. There is this http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1595/en_US/ipad_user_guide.pdf It explains what iCloud can do, but not what it can't do and it just does not say like "syncing mails is only possible with your icloud.com mail account".

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