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?

Yes, of cause it is a bug.

And if this is done on purpose it is even worse, because in this case it shows how unprofessional the Apple developers are if they don't understand how POP3 supposed to work.

That will remain in the realm of speculation because we will never find that out.

Astounding that this problem hasn't yet been corrected. I'm actually surprised that iOS 9.1 is still available for download. Anyway, call me old school, but I not only have my email accounts (comcast.net) setup for POP/SMTP on my Windows 7 PC, but I deliberately have each one configured not to leave a copy on the (Comcast) server. I'd much rather store, and periodically back-up, all email to my hard drives (internal, and external for archiving). Soooo, unlike so many others, I haven't really lost any email (or attachments) because of this problem, but have lost the ability to reference about 3-4 years of email copies that used to be on my old iPad 2. Just glad I didn't update my wife's iPhone 5S to iOS 9+, as she references old rmail on her iDevice much more frequently that I do.

Yes, this is a good point.

Apple knows that 9.x has a bug that deletes customer data and they still make it available to download. This is really bad.

ras5280 wrote:

"Anyway, call me old school, but I not only have my email accounts (comcast.net) setup for POP/SMTP on my Windows 7 PC, but I deliberately have each one configured not to leave a copy on the (Comcast) server."

Chance are Comcast has all of your mail on its server irrespective of your device being set to remove messages from the server. That is the case with most ISPs. My primary device for retrieving email, a MacBook Pro, is set to remove messages from the server when they are retrieved. Yet my iPhone which is set to never remove messages from the server will take in all of the mail that was already retrieved on the MacBook Pro. So if I already removed mail on the MacBook Pro which is set to remove mail from the server immediately on retrieval, in order for the iPhone to get those same messages 2 and 3 days AFTER they were retrieved by the MacBook Pro the mail obviously is still on the server which means that the ISP for my personal email, Optimum, does not remove mail from the server despite the mail client on my computer being set to remove when messages are retrieved. An ISP may tell you that messages are removed from the server but that more often than not is not the case.

That's not the way my POP account on Verizon is functioning. When I retrieve messages from my Laptop(home computer), those emails are deleted from Verizon's server.....I cannot retrieve those messages again from my iPad, after retrieving from the laptop. This is the way I expect it to work also.

My remarks were not intended as an absolute, but rather to describe behavior common to many if not most ISPs. I'm pretty sure that ISPs are subject to some regulatory or other legal obligations to retain data on their servers. What I meant to convey is the fact that a device is unable to retrieve a message(s) that was previously retrieved from an ISPs server does not, in itself, mean the message(s) is no longer retained on the ISPs server.

Rontu2 wrote:

What I meant to convey is the fact that a device is unable to retrieve a message(s) that was previously retrieved from an ISPs server does not, in itself, mean the message(s) is no longer retained on the ISPs server.

Correct. In fact, ISPs are legally required to retain all email messages for an indeterminate length of time by US federal law. So you may not be able to retrieve them once deleted, but the government can, and anyone who hacks the ISP can.

jaymlee wrote:

"Everything appears to be working how it use to be after the 9.1 update last night, emails in all folders are still complete in all devices even with the BT POP mail servers wiped clean."

The issue continues for many on this forum so I am wondering since your comment posted on 22nd October whether your mail app continues to operate free of this problem. Thanks.

Oh my word!...it is most bewildering why so many users are still experiencIng this issue, on the other hand, the recent 9.1 update appears to have rectified this POP mail issue on my MacBook, iPad and iPhone. All my emails with and without attachments are still intact on all three devices with full content in all folders a month on, even with my MacBook set to Remove Messages Immediately after retrieval from the BT outlook.com POP mail server.

The $64k dollar question is what's different with my POP settings which are working faultlessly compared to the settings used by the majority of users in this forumn who are still continuing to experience this problem? I wish there was a way to make a comparison.

Could it be because you don't delete messages from the server and always have good Internet connection?

The worst thing with my iPhone today is that one can't rely on e-mail to be there when one needs them.

You go to a different country where it is really expensive to use data roaming on your phone and, say, after getting to a hotel you try to find a booking reference number to show on reception. And the e-mail is not there.

I was considering to upgrade my phone from 5 to 6s in December, but with this bug and, worse, with Apple attitude to this I am seriously considering switching to an Android phone.

Hello Lawrence Finch. Let us know please your thoughts on the question raised by jaymlee in his recent post. Thank you,.

jaymlee wrote:

Oh my word!...it is most bewildering why so many users are still experiencIng this issue, on the other hand, the recent 9.1 update appears to have rectified this POP mail issue on my MacBook, iPad and iPhone. All my emails with and without attachments are still intact on all three devices with full content in all folders a month on, even with my MacBook set to Remove Messages Immediately after retrieval from the BT outlook.com POP mail server.

The $64k dollar question is what's different with my POP settings which are working faultlessly compared to the settings used by the majority of users in this forumn who are still continuing to experience this problem? I wish there was a way to make a comparison."

outlook.com is not a POP server. It will always retain messages on the server, even for POP email.

Anyone else notice unexpected background activity on the Mail client? I happened to be looking at the battery usage on my iPad and noticed the mail client had spent x% in the background. As I have my email accounts set up just to manually retrieve my mail I.e. when I go into the mail app and swipe down to retrieve new mail, I wouldn't have expected much, if indeed any background activity at all. Might this suggest a garbage or memory clearing task that wasn't there prior to iOS 9? Prior to that release, it was evident that the mail client really didn't handle deletions all that well - even with supposedly emptied inboxes, I still ran up 100s of Mb of mail storage usage which I could only release by deleting and recreating mail accounts.

(As an aside, I went into my local Apple Store today and had the expected frustrating "we don't know about such an issue, so it must be your ISP/ delete and recreate your account/ use IMAP, you can still access all your mail in flight mode"/ and best(?) of all when I referred to this thread - the impertinent response that "you can't believe everything you read on the Internet". I did manage to elicit a call from support tomorrow, but given my experience in-store, I'm not expecting much better)