After ios9 update my emails with attachments won't open and say "message not yet downloaded from server". They were there previously. How do I get them back?

schoodle wrote:

@Lawrence Finch

So, it was unrelated, and yet I had a similar issue.

Now that I'm back home, and fully connected to my own WiFi, I can see the confirmation email attachments on my iPhone; yet when I was at the hotel in Milwaukee and also connected to WiFi, I couldn't see these on my iPhone, only on my laptop?

I don't think it's at all similar. Were you seeing the missing emails in the list if emails, but when you tried to open them you got the message "this message has not been downloaded from the server?"

Rontu2 wrote:

Good evening Lawrence Finch. Thanks, I'm only a participant endeavoring to be helpful to the extent I am able. I have 7.8GB Available.

Ah, well, another theory shot to heck. I was wondering if memory was almost full, and iOS was deleting stuff to keep going.

You are being helpful, and I'm sure everyone appreciates it.

I've been following this thread from day 1 - having the same issue on both my iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2. I've tried everything recommended - nothing works (as we know). I've had 6 chat sessions with support - their response has ranged from delete the email account to Apple engineers are working hard on it, to this is the first we've heard of it. So no real support with that.

It's been escalated twice now, and I've got a phone appt with Apple on Wednesday - see what comes of that.

For me this is a critical issue - when on field trips away from phone reception areas (i.e 300km away in the bush - with no phone reception) I need access to email (& attachment) content.

Yesterday I attempted the restore as a new iPad fix (so called) - the emails worked fine for around 20 hours, but back to the problem again now. Email storage went from 100mb down to 2mb.

Hate to say it, but if not fixed may have to go to a Samsung - I have had every iPhone from the very first (and every iPad), but this is impinging on my ability to work away on field trips big time now. Deal breaker

@Lawrence Finch

I don't think it's at all similar. Were you seeing the missing emails in the list if emails, but when you tried to open them you got the message "this message has not been

downloaded from the server?"

Your response to schoodle describes exactly the situation that i am seeing - the missing emails are in the list of emails but on opening the message I see "this message has not been downloaded from the server." Additionally note that in the list of emails, the missing email shows a paper clip indicating an attached file, and sometimes even show the name of the attached file, but when I try to open the message nothing appears save for the dreaded 'not downloaded from server' dialogue.

As an aside, isn't past time Apple found a better way than 'restore as a new ipad' to try and recover from o/s bugs, separating user data like music and photos and third party apps from their o/s partitions? Maybe something along the lines of, dare I say it, MS Windows scannow /Sfc to restore/ reset system files? I really, really, really resent having to reload around 10mb of music, 20mb of photos, and around 30mb of apps and data - which literally does take days on my IPad 3 - just because some bug screwed up iOS. As a retired techie (mainly mainframe) of almost forty years, I find this so 1980s and so redolent of the Applie egosystem (pun very much intended)

Rontu2 wrote:

Your response to schoodle describes exactly the situation that i am seeing - the missing emails are in the list of emails but on opening the message I see "this message has not been downloaded from the server." Additionally note that in the list of emails, the missing email shows a paper clip indicating an attached file, and sometimes even show the name of the attached file, but when I try to open the message nothing appears save for the dreaded 'not downloaded from server' dialogue.

Yes, I understand that. I've seen one post in this thread that reported the problem in iOS 8.2, so it may not be specifically an iOS 9 issue. And I have encountered it randomly for several years, but on IMAP accounts. For those I can fix it by moving the message to another email folder, then back to the Inbox. But these were messages that had never displayed, not ones that had been there, then disappeared. Last night I sent 2 emails with attachments to my seldom used POP account. So far they are still there and complete after 15 hours. I'll continue tracking them.

Your comment about software is off topic but very true. It is amazing that Apple can make such great hardware and pair it with a non-intuitive, buggy, unfriendly, ponderous, piece of software like iTunes. I think it has to do with maintaining proprietary control of the hardware, and they do it really badly. But as I said, off topic for the moment.

Interestingly, missing emails (more specifically - missing content in emails) extends to my trash and my send folders. This suggests some sort of memory issue but there is no logic I can find that determines what is deleted and when.

Yes Lawrence, I could see the emails in the emails list, and I had previously been able to view the attachments more than once too. So, they must have been downloaded onto my phone at one time, but later, when I needed to do something, such as check in online with the airline and needed my confirmation number to do this with, I clicked on the email with the attachment and would get the " message not yet downloaded from server." It seems so odd, as it was previously downloaded and viewable multiple times. I checked the emails before leaving home to make sure I had the necessary documents in my email on my phone so I wouldn't have to use my laptop to do something such as checking in. I was at an event when the time came to do the airline check-in. I got the reminder message to do it from my calendar, but I wasn't able to view the necessary attachment to complete the check-in.

Yes! That's exactly what's happening!

I don't know if it has anything to do with an email account being either POP or IMAP, though some say it's only for their IMAP accounts. Both of my email accounts are set up as IMAP on my computer. Not sure how to check or change that on my phone, or even if I want to change it. It's happening with both my email accounts, but only on my iPhone, which is my only iOS device.

This only became an issue since updating to iOS 9, at least for me.

I too wonder if it's a memory issue. I don't think I'd ever checked on how much memory was being allocated where on my phone, so I can't verify any increases or drops in the allocations. I do have a lot of stored emails, though most do not have attachments.

ANYONE TRY USING IMAP? DOES THIS ALSO HAPPEN THEN?

At least for my providers mailserver it looks like I found a workaround (to be honest, my provider gave me working settings)

I have set up my POP Account with the following modifications to what IOS gave me as default:

SMTP:

Use SSL OFF

In Advanced:

Use SSL OFF

Port 110 instead of 995

During the verification process I had to manually trust the certificate of the pop and smtp servers

This setup is working since yesterday noon time, so more than 24 hours. The memory footprint is aprox. 59.1 MB.

After playing around with all kind of dummy accounts for testing I reactivated my original Mail account and just made the above mentioned modifications and since then, everything works fine. But all mails which had been lost remain in the "This message has not been downloaded from the server." condition and are lost. Hope the growing memory does not cause the problem to return.

heribertfromaustria wrote:

At least for my providers mailserver it looks like I found a workaround (to be honest, my provider gave me working settings)

I have set up my POP Account with the following modifications to what IOS gave me as default:

SMTP:

Use SSL OFF

If you use this setting you should never use an unsecured WiFi network (such as those at cafes). Without SSL all of your email, including your user ID and passwords, can be intercepted by anyone else using the same network.

Sure switching SSL off is bad, the question is why this solves (for me) this problem. Any Idea?

heribertfromaustria wrote:

At least for my providers mailserver it looks like I found a workaround (to be honest, my provider gave me working settings)

I have set up my POP Account with the following modifications to what IOS gave me as default:

SMTP:

Use SSL OFF

In Advanced:

Use SSL OFF

Port 110 instead of 995

During the verification process I had to manually trust the certificate of the pop and smtp servers

This setup is working since yesterday noon time, so more than 24 hours. The memory footprint is aprox. 59.1 MB.

After playing around with all kind of dummy accounts for testing I reactivated my original Mail account and just made the above mentioned modifications and since then, everything works fine. But all mails which had been lost remain in the "This message has not been downloaded from the server." condition and are lost. Hope the growing memory does not cause the problem to return.

Looks like the reason for working was NOT this Setting, but the memory! After memory having climbed up to about 60 MB again, mails with attachments disapeared and the memory of mail dropped down to abou 6 or 7 MB. This had been reported already.

I give up!