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?

to Mackenzietsi - I think the most of the issues reported by far on these threads have been pertaining to lost email on POP accounts.

IMAP seems to be working - at least in my own experience...

Greetings,

Sad to say, my reseting email messages to Mark as Unread did NOT work. Spent 30 mins at an Apple store and no luck. And finally, I deleted my account and reset my phone to the day I received it...asked for a password for email and I started receiving emails. Let's see if they "stick around." I plan to leave the emails on the internet server to see if that might be causing the problem.

The tech did say he thought it might have to do with a new operating system not working well with a POP account.

i was going to say exactly the same thing AndroidEnvy. It's great to be getting lots of suggestions, but it is now getting a bit confusing, as I think most of us in this thread are in POP and wish to stay that way. Changing to IMAP may be a fix for some, which is great, but not a fix for those of us which wish to remain on POP.

Do we need to create a new thread with POP in the heading to avoid confusion, and false hope?

Thanks again for all the suggestions though, keep them coming!

Hi Rontu2, Will616, AndroidEnvy and other affected POPs

I have just left the Apple Store after my Genius appointment. It started with a shall we saw “robust”, discussion about IMAP v POP! I said I didn’t want to have that discussion, rather I just wanted Apple to let people know if it was no longer going to support POP.

I said I didn’t expect him to be able to fix anything for me today, rather just to escalate the message up the chain to hopefully make a POP fix into a future update. He said he would, and also suggested I send feedback via the link. I said I had already done that.

I must admit, I am feeling quite disheartened as I don’t know if Apple will hear from enough people affected by the changed POP behaviour to put the effort into solving it. 😢 Is the only real solution to resort to IMAP on our devices? 😕

Update: I have been trying to reproduce the problem without success. I sent two emails with large attachments (~ 1.5 MB) to my one remaining POP account about 36 hours ago. Both are still on my phone, with the attachments. I'll give it several more days.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Update: I have been trying to reproduce the problem without success. I sent two emails with large attachments (~ 1.5 MB) to my one remaining POP account about 36 hours ago. Both are still on my phone, with the attachments. I'll give it several more days.

Hello,

I did a lot of testing, the problem seemed to be solved after each try, but reappeared always.

However, during the last try I followed the recommendation given in one of the posts above and had an eye on memory used by mail. After 60 MB had been reached, the misery reappeared. Mail tried to download old mails, which had been deleted from the POP Server already, with no success....

Regards

For me it happens where the email is downloaded to the phone first (emails and attachments are opened and read / viewed). later when I subsequently download them onto my PC and read them etc, I can no longer read them on the phone (message not downloaded from server) - even though a few hours before they were. The attachments usually range from 3 mbup to 8mb (photos, documents). Only happens on iOS9 - iOS7 & iOS8 no problem at all

I just sent additional large email attachments totaling over 100 MB. My total mail storage is currently 273 MB. I'll keep monitoring.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Everyone reading this thread needs to take your advice and register their complaint at www.apple.com/feedback.

Are you using imap or POP? I originally used POP and lost content on some of my emails after each software update. I hoped it was just a freak accident. Then I noticed I continued to lose content on some emails. My settings on my mobile devices were not to delete from the server. When I download emails on my iMac they are then deleted from the server. What I believe my problem is that when I am not using cellular or wifi many email contents are not available. As soon as I get a connection the email content is available, unless I have deleted it from the server. This is not how Mail worked prior to the software update. I don't want to leave my emails on the server and I want to have them available when I am not connected. I don't think this has anything to do with file sizes. It seems like the app just wants to be continuously connected and if it is not it deletes content. I have insured I am using the correct POP settings.

i did try imap for a few days but, again, I couldn't access email contact offline. Is this the way it is supposed to work? I am using an iPad Air and iPhone 6plus.

My question is: why this bug is found only from a part of customers using pop account? If not it would also been talked from all media channels.

I've no answers for that.

I am having exactly the same problem as everyone else in that all the content in my saved emails have disappeared to be replaced by the message "This message has not been downloaded from the server".

I am receiving emails ok on my Ipad but after about 1 day the content disappears and is replaced by the dreaded message.

I have also upgraded to IOS9.0.1 and IOS9.0.2 to see whether that would fix the problem but it doesn't.

The worst ever IOS upgrade from Apple. So much for pre-release software testing!

Use this link for iPhone feedback: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Please post that on the feedback link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Below is a copy of the explanation that Will616 posted. It is the best explanation I've seen of what is going on.

------------------------------------------------ Copy of Posting ------------------------------------------

I have the same issue. I have identified at least 4 other
separate threads on the apple forums as well as numerous threads on other forums.
I will attempt to précis them here and also provide links so you can read
through my sources yourselves. Note there is, as always, a significant
amount of duff information, guessing and questionable fact obscuring the useful
evidence.

1. 1. This issue only appears to be affecting people with email
   accounts set up for pop/smtp.
2. 2. Following upgrade to iOS 9 / iOS 9.01 and possibly the 9.1
   beta as well, email content is removed from the iOS device resulting in a
   sudden decrease in the storage required for the mail app.
3. 3. Emails that may have been present on the device for many
   months and accessed multiple times in both the inbox and sent items will be
   randomly replaced with the basic placeholder information (similar to a IMAP
   case prior to download) but with the body and attachments replaced by the
   statement: This message has not been downloaded from the server.
4. 4. Deleting the account and setting it up again from scratch
   does not resolve the issue and will result in the loss of all the email
   placeholders - further increasing your loss of knowledge so you can't even work
   out what you've lost (tried it with one of my 4 accounts - won't be doing any
   more of them). I forwarded a lost message that was held on my iMac
   archive back to the newly set up pop/smtp account and it appeared and was
   accessible for about 12 hours before reverting to 'This message has not....
5. 5. Switching the account to IMAP if you go for a delete and
   re-setup will also result in the loss of all the email placeholders but will
   'probably' solve the problem (within the limitations of IMAP) for future
   emails.
6. 6. This affects all iOS devices - iPads (all gens on iOS 9)
   iPhones (all gens on iOS 9). It is not affecting the same email accounts
   on our OS X machines (an iMac)
7. 7. This issue affects you irrespective of you country, internet
   provider or email provider - the discriminator is the use of pop/smtp. It
   is disappointing that a number of apple customers have paid for support and
   been palmed off with this as a possible cause.
8. 8. pop/smtp is not legacy or backward compared to imap it is
   just different. We use pop/smtp for 3 reasons: we don't want emails left
   on the server where a questionably secure environment could be compromised; our
   family want the ability to all download the same email to multiple devices
   without affecting each others ability to do so; we want one master device (the
   main iMac) to be the deleting device that holds the archive of all emails
   (right now we are very pleased we have this as all the iOS devices are scorched
   earth right now).
9. 9. Some emails appear unaffected - I cannot identify any rhyme
   or reason to this. Old, new, addressee, - there doesn't seem to be a
   pattern. Can't say for certain but it seems that more are being affected as
   time goes on. If you are affected and you have the only copy of an email
   currently and you are going to need it again.....get it somewhere else ASAP!!!
10. 10. This thread and forum is just for sharing knowledge between
    users. If this has affected you then you need to fill in the apple
    feedback page with your confirmed symptoms and the impact if you want anything
    to be done. Follow this link and do it now or apple pop users will remain
    without a fix! I recommend do one for each type of iOS device you have
    affected and the mail app itself.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Here are the other apple forum threads related to this issue -
maybe someone else is familiar with a clever way to link them all up - please
do so if you know how:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7226924

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7221489

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7226501