What do I do if BCC is inconsistent?

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Level 1

19 points

What do I do if BCC is inconsistent?

My ISP is Brighthouse with Roadrunner email, with that email address being my Apple ID. Roadrunner is my default for all incoming and outgoing mail, which I access from my PC at home and from my iPhone 5 with iOS 8.1.3 when I am out and about.

I always BCC myself for all sent mail. But it is inconsistent. Even though I can see an outgoing email in the iPhone Sent folder, lately a small fraction of my expected BCC copies don't show up on my iPhone -- or on my PC -- even after waiting hours. So I am not sure if the mail even reached the original "To" recipient unless I get a reply from there.

To diagnose this, I went to my Roadrunner webmail account, hoping to see that the errant email from my iPhone had arrived in the Sent folder there. But I was surprised that NONE of my sent mail shows up in that sent folder. So I really don't know how the iPhone email works with Roadrunner.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so is there a fix for the missing BCC and an explanation of the link with Roadrunner?

Mail-OTHER, iOS 8.1.3

Posted on Mar 8, 2015 8:50 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 8, 2015 9:03 AM in response to wkrasl

I don't know about roadrunner specifically, but the key question is whether it is a POP3 or an IMAP account. POP3 does not sync folders between the server and the client. IMAP should, but some implementations do not sync the SENT folder. So you should ask Roadrunner.

The other thing to check is the spam folder. Many ISPs consider mail from you addressed to you to be spam, because forging the sender's address is a trick that spammers used for years to get your ISP to accept their messages.

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Answer 2

wkrasl Author

Level 1

19 points

Mar 8, 2015 10:16 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks Lawrence, but that wasn't it. I just figured out the solution to my problem. It was self-inflicted 2-part problem. Out of habit, I automatically delete all incoming mail from my iPhone after reading, relying on Outlook on my PC to preserve a historical copy in my PST file. I have years of incoming and outgoing email history in those PST files.

So here is what I discovered:

The first half of the problem is that I am too fast for my own good, deleting a large percentage of incoming email from my iPhone within seconds after its arrival. By the time I wondered whether any particular BCC had arrived on my iPhone, it was already sitting in my iPhone Trash folder. BUT the reason I thought some BCC were intermittently failing is because no copy arrived on my PC.

The second half of the problem is that deleting incoming email from my iPhone removes it from the Roadrunner server. If I am TOO fast on my iPhone, deleting it as soon as it arrives, the automatic "Send/Receive All Folders (F9)" in Outlook hasn't popped yet. Then by the time Outlook is ready to pull in the BCC for preserving my history, the BCC is gone. I found those missing BCC's in the Roadrunner deleted email folder.

LOL.

Bottom line: I have Outlook set to keep incoming mail on the server 7 days in advanced settings, and have iPhone set to keep deleted mail one week in advanced setting. But the latter is only referring to the trash folder on the iPhone. I need Apple to stop deleting mail from my Roadrunner server when I send incoming mail to trash on the iPhone. In the meantime, I just need to slow down and let mail sit in my iPhone inbox about 15 minutes.

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Answer 3

wkrasl Author

Level 1

19 points

Mar 9, 2015 8:17 AM in response to wkrasl

Update. Thanks to an old thread on IMAP vs POP3, I learned that I can set up my iPhone email to use POP3 to stop syncing email delete with the server, which is the way it used to work.

However some iOS update removed the POP3 choice from straightforward email setup. So do your setup with an incorrect password and select Next. Verification fails, at which point you then get a chance to choose POP3 while correcting the password. 🙂

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Answer 4

Mar 9, 2015 8:20 AM in response to wkrasl

wkrasl wrote:

Update. Thanks to an old thread on IMAP vs POP3, I learned that I can set up my iPhone email to use POP3 to stop syncing email delete with the server, which is the way it used to work.

However some iOS update removed the POP3 choice from straightforward email setup. So do your setup with an incorrect password and select Next. Verification fails, at which point you then get a chance to choose POP3 while correcting the password. 🙂

Yes, that's the solution: Forcing creation of a POP or IMAP email account

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