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?

It appears web360, that Apple advising that Engineering knows about this BIG BUG and is working to fix is inconsistent with the response below that Whitlam75 received from Apple Engineering. There they say iOS Mail caches the email but that cache may clear when space is needed. It also states that mail was never stored on the iOS device.

That suggests that by some strange coincidence, since no one lost messages that were on their devices prior to iOS9, that prior to iOS9 no one ever had cache cleared. Seems like a very very long shot.

Whitlam75Oct 8, 2015 1:20 AM Re: Re: 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?
Re: 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?in response to Lawrence Finch

Response from Apple's engineering

The customer is reporting that POP emails are not opening after updating to iOS 9. iOS Mail caches the email, and then that cache may clear when space is needed. It will then download them again from the server.

This issue usually starts if one of the devices/computers that was setup with this email account has been configured to remove a copy of emails on the server. If this is the case, the customer will need to check the settings of all the devices and computers that are running this email account.

iOS leaves messages on the POP3 server by default. iOS never stores email permanently, whether POP3 or IMAP. If they are removed from the server by another device then this issue can occur.

A test that you may want to do to confirm this is to have the customer produce the error by opening one affected mail on the iOS device, and then locate that specific email on his webmail. If not found, then the device is behaving as expected. If found, please try to forward it to the same mailbox and see if the same issue occurs.

I look forward to your follow-up on this issue with the results of checking data on the server.

One thing Apple failed to understand, and also a number of affected individuals on this thread, is regarding "Sent" mail we create and send from our mobile devices. Our Sent mail is supposed to reside in our Sent folders on the device that created those mails. All of my Sent mail with attachments, in addition to a random number of sent mails without attachments will show the dreaded "Message cannot be downloaded from the server"! Really, Apple??

I hope someone at Apple is smart enough to catch this POP bug!! Quit trying to act like a defense attorney....your position and beliefs about how POP accounts work is "not" defendable.....it's dead wrong!!!

AndroidEnvy wrote:

"I know that prior to iOS 9 my POP email would download to my phone and I never got the 'this message has not been downloaded from server'. Something changed on email behavior when I updated to iOS 9 whereby my email is behaving as this Apple engineer describes in your post - but that is different (and undesirable).

Sounds like based on this note that we have to leave email on the server - one flavor of email whatever initials you call it? Which at least for my style of usage defeats the features of POP mail that I found very desirable. Not sure how this will work when I'm in a remote area with poor connectivity or a long flight to APAC now. But I know that previously once downloaded to my device, I always had access to those messages and could work them even after being deleted from the server."

My own understanding and past experience match yours exactly - this issue did not exist before iOS9. The suggestion by Apple Engineering that iOS Mail could have retrieved messages from a POP server after those messages had been removed from the POP server is preposterous.

Roger that.

This is exactly right. How can the sent messages be stored on the server (unless I blind cc'd myself). This makes no sense. I am confused and disappointed in Apple's engineer response. I can only hope he is confused and wrong.

Totally agree - I'll be looking for an email client on ios that does support POP unless Apple fix this.

Surely they have a changelog of what they did to the mail app for ios9 that might support what we see is happening?

If I get time, and my blood pressure allows it 😉 , I'll maybe visit the fresh faced 'geniuses' (who probably will be younger than the POP protocol) at one of my local Apple stores. I'll take along my ios9 Ipad with the problem and my old ios6 Ipod Touch that - despite Apple engineers saying ios never stores emails - has copies of emails that the Ipad now can't download, as well as others for a year or two back.

And, if I'm lucky, I'll show them the emails disappearing when I switch off wifi.

I'll insist they open a bug report and see how far I get...

,

Rontu2 wrote:

Whitlam 75 wrote:

"It seems that email accounts are being treated as IMAP, even when set to POP3."

I concur. It is a significant issue because iOS9 defeats the benefits of a POP server. While not having access to data when not connected is a major inconvenience, there is a more serious issue which for me is security. To me the most important benefit of POP is not having to store messages on the server because if our mail server was ever compromised, the bad actor would only have access to that mail not yet retrieved.

Our small business runs a POP server. Every network user's computer is set to remove messages from the server when mail is retrieved. Our iPhones are set to NEVER remove messages from the server. That way if mail is retrieved on an iPhone it remains on the server but only until that mail is retrieved by that user's computer. The security issue is major for me because our email contains private and confidential business data which may include financial statements, tax returns etc etc.

You are missing the much larger security issue: every ISP maintains copies of all email by law. Even after they are deleted (think Hillary's email server). So deleting them only provides a false sense of security. Anyone who can hack your ISP can still get all of your deleted messages. Including (or especially) the NSA, who don't even need to hack it; they get all of your email anyway. As far as hacking your account is concerned, first, that's your responsibility to have a strong password and 2 factor authentication if your ISP offers it (Apple, Google, Yahoo and many others do). But more to the point, if your ISP offers IMAP but you access it as POP, deleting mail from the server just moves it to the Deleted or Trash folders on the server, it doesn't actually remove it from the server. So anyone who hacks your account can still see your deleted email.

Security is important, but the illusion of security is a serious issue and as dangerous as lack of security.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

"You are missing the much larger security issue: every ISP maintains copies of all email by law. Even after they are deleted (think Hillary's email server). So deleting them only provides a false sense of security. Anyone who can hack your ISP can still get all of your deleted messages. Including (or especially) the NSA, who don't even need to hack it; they get all of your email anyway. As far as hacking your account is concerned, first, that's your responsibility to have a strong password and 2 factor authentication if your ISP offers it (Apple, Google, Yahoo and many others do). But more to the point, if your ISP offers IMAP but you access it as POP, deleting mail from the server just moves it to the Deleted or Trash folders on the server, it doesn't actually remove it from the server. So anyone who hacks your account can still see your deleted email.

Security is important, but the illusion of security is a serious issue and as dangerous as lack of security."

We do not use our ISP for email so the mail is not stored on their servers. Mail resides on our own mail server which is in house together with our own DNS server. Our ISP has only our public or WAN IP address.

Focus, Finch! Focus!!! You're getting way off topic here.

Please use your Level 7 status to Help those affected....We don't need a lesson on email security here....We just want our Apple Mail app to function like it "ALWAYS" has!!

carolinseattle wrote:

"This is exactly right. How can the sent messages be stored on the server (unless I blind cc'd myself). This makes no sense. I am confused and disappointed in Apple's engineer response. I can only hope he is confused and wrong."

I believe you are correct. My understanding is that sent mail does not stay on a POP3 server. The mail preference on my computer associated with removing messages from the server relates to messages that are 'retrieved', not sent.

I have reported the problem through an internal channel.

However, citing security as a reason to not leave messages on the server is not a valid.

I was like most people on this forum who found it annoying that suddenly Apple's latest iOS upgrade caused such issues with my POP mail. I have also sent Apple a feedback as per recommendations in this forum.

I've now been making changes to my POP mail accounts (on my Macbook and desktop PC using Outlook) so that emails now only get deleted from the server when I remove them from the Deleted folder on those devices. This way I can still have access to them on my iPad. Basically I've had to rethink how I deal with POP mail since the iOS 9 changes to Mail. I am now finding this to be preferable to how it used to be pre-iOS 9. Let me explain.

Prior to iOS 9 the memory usage of my POP mail accounts on my iPad would just continue to grow and eventually I had to remove the account and then add it again to get the usage back to low MB figures. I found this very annoying.

In recent years it has become apparent that Apple is directing it's users to make better use of the cloud when storing documents etc. Apple does not provide large memory on it's devices, such as iPads. The latest iPads max out at 128GB but really we only need around 32GB if we are using the cloud to it's fullest potential i.e. storing as much as possible away from our device.

I am now starting to think that Apple have purposely designed iOS 9 so as to treat POP emails the same way i.e. keep them in the cloud (or ISP's server) and not on the iPad itself, therefore fixing the issue of the Mail app using so much memory on the iPad. I have noticed now that my Mail app stays around the 60MB size all the time and no longer increases to ridiculous sizes (close to 1GB) like it did pre iOS 9.

I am now coming around to liking this new arrangement. Apple has a history of making users think outside the box and look to better ways to manage their devices and memory usage (e.g. they were first to remove floppy discs etc).

I have a Macbook Air as well as a Desktop PC. Both devices have my emails fully downloaded and accessible, when required. Recently (under iOS 9) if those emails are then deleted from the server then they are still accessible on the Macbook and PC but no longer on the iPad. I don't find this a problem now. I have now changed the PC Outlook settings to only delete from the server after I remove the email from the Deleted folder.

In summary, I wouldn't expect Apple to "fix" this issue too soon as I think they are simply retraining us to make better use of the cloud and email providers such as iCloud, gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com etc which don't cause these problems of email suddenly disappearing.

At the end of the day I now have a work-around that ensures I can access all my important emails on any device (including my iPad) and at the same time keep the Mail app usage to a very low level that no longer requires me to remove email accounts in order to keep my iPad memory usage to a minimum. I'm now starting to like it.

So what happens when you don't have access to the Internet??? I travel for work and definitely do not have reliable internet access at all times. Give us the option of where we want the mail to be stored... Don't force it on us.

You might be beginning to like it, but that feeling will soon pass! Imagine you are in a situation where you are away from WiFi and do not have 3/4G coverage. Then you can not access any servers and that really important information you want to access on your iPad will not be there for you. Not only that, but when you go to check on some of the emails you have sent, you will find that they have gone too (as will anything in your deleted folder that you may want to check or retrieve). No, the situation whereby you store and keep emails on your device MUST be restored as a matter of great urgency. If for some reason you happen to exceed the memory available on your device due to stored emails, then that is your problem. You fix it, and do not relay on Apple to automatically fix it for you to the detriment of all other iOS users. We should be able to (must) take responsibility for storage on our devices and if we exceed it, delete something ourselves or upgrade to a device with more memory. Pre iOS9 functionality MUST be returned asap. I need to be able to RELY on my devices, just like I always could.