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?

Hi, you say email has no backup - I consider (or used to before ios9) that my pop email on my ipad was my backup of mails I wanted/ needed to see away from my laptop, not a transient cache. It's fine for Apple to assume apps, music or whatever can be reconstituted from the Cloud, but if that is their strategy, they show a misunderstanding of POP email and its users.

Brantome, I believe your summation is pretty accurate. I also agree with user Spewer22 prediction that 9.2 will not fully resolve the issue.

As far as your remark... "It's fine for Apple to assume apps, music or whatever can be reconstituted from the Cloud, but if that is their strategy, they show a misunderstanding of POP email and its users”. …I believe it’s not the only demonstration of misunderstanding of their customers needs and wants. When products and services delivered do not match, customers walk away no matter how shiny and desirable the hardware maybe.

As it stands for some customers, IOS devices are not fit for purpose for Mail handling. How much patience they have is the question. Mine is exhausted.

Thanks for your analysis and comments. Good luck with the appointment.

Spewer22...Right now, thanks to IOS9 my iPad and iPhone are nothing more than just expensive paperweights.

- Mail doesn't work

- Safari is broken

- Music App is atrocious

- Newstand is busted

- Photos is atrocious

not to mention the useless bloatware Apps that can't be got rid of.

And I'm an Apple fan.

I had similar experiences. Now I'm running the most recent beta of iOS 9 since a couple of days and things seem to work again. E-mails from my POP account stay put (including the attachments) and the iPad reacts noticeably faster.

That's hopeful. Do you notice any background activity as reported above, and could you try leaving your iPad on flight mode, say overnight, and then have a look at downloaded emails that have been deleted from your pop server while still in flight mode the next morning to see if they exhibit the issues I mention in my overlong post above?

BTW, had a pleasant discussion with Apple Support where the agent seemed to readily accept that this was a software glitch that she would pass to second line support, although she didn't explicitly acknowledge it as a known bug. At least it was a much better reception than the impertinence, indifference and arrogance I experienced in my local Apple Store.

Just tried it in flightmode and checked older e-mail with attachments from a few days ago. It worked. Mail activity in the last 24 hours: 6 minutes Background, 24 minutes on screen. Not too bad, I think. Cheers.

I have only recently upgraded to 9.1 (fool me!)

to get back to the topic: the bug seems to only hit emails of a certain size. hence email 'conversations' will be lost and emails with attachements which also make the email larger are also lost.

With me i noticed this when I replied (using smtp ) to a chain email about a negotiation and I suddenly noticed that the next they this email was no longer in my SEND box except for that stupid placeholder.

As the SMTP server obviously doesnt hold a copy, the email I send is now lost.

this is an appalling bit of oversight by Apple. A Royal Screw Up. I will stop using the ipad for mail until this issue is resovled.

I do not want to use unreliable equipment, and at the moment my ipad is just that. Unreliable.

Having the same email problem - "message not downloaded from server".

My ISP is Bell Canada. I have deleted and reinstalled mail on both iPad and iPhone,

deleted and and rebuilt mail account on Sympatico. I even tried to downgrade iPad iOS

version on back to iOS 8.4.1, which failed and I was forced to download and install version

9.1 and then restore iPad from iTunes backup.

Fortunately my mail is not not deleted from server so I still have access from PC.

Only solution is to open a gmail account and have all "pop3" mail forwarded to it until

Apple finds it in their heart to fix their problem. After all, Christmas is coming and

miracles do happen..

Don.

I too am having this iOS mail issue (for ages). I have discussions ongoing with Apple for both my iPad and my iMac. iPad senior consultant says a fix is coming and will follow up with me when the IOS update has come out. The engineers have received logs from my iMac and a senior consultant there is waiting to hear back. I don't know if these issues are related or whether the IOs problem is more than one problem but my iMac Mail preferences keep reverting to default of deleting emails from server after one week. If I don't turn my computer off (and the preferences remain as I want them to, which to not delete them off the server), then my emails on my iPhone and iPad remain in tact. I have not yet tested this without internet access. I do not always have access to internet and that is why I have pop emails and not Imap! I lost access to airline tickets with this mess. Another interesting thing is that my provider(also Bell) seems to recognize that my emails are being deleted off the server by another program and so have saved all my emails into a folder they called 'pop'

update: I tried my iPad without internet and could not see message content on some emails . This is not the way pop is supposed to work, I turned the wifi back on and the content appeared again.

I am not finding the size of a message correlating to whether the email is lost. All mail that whether text only or with an attached file disappears. That's especially odd since I've noticed in the past 1-2 days that messages are not disappearing within 8 hours of arriving on the iPhone. Up until a day or two ago the messages typically remained on the device for 24-48 hours. The only exception seems to be those messages that contain a hyperlink. They remain on the device, and several were received more than a month ago. That behavior is puzzling.

I meant to write "now disappearing within 8 hours" instead of 'not' disappearing.

you may be right. I only experienced the problems with bigger SEND messages but it does seem as if the behaviour of this software has several

'odd' aspects which points to some extra code messing with email content based on some screwy algorithm probably. most likely all in the name of longer battery life or better storage use.

I think this is once again an example of programmers assuming people work in a certain way without actually bothering to find out

how folks really work.

As was posted before: POP mail is simply not suppose to work this way. This email software seems to have undergone some very significant changes which werent tested correctly.

My ipad is currently just a browsing tool. Mail isnt reliable and therefore dangerous to use.One reads conflicting reports of what apple is doing about this or not doing about this. I do wish they make a simple statement. We all know it is screwed. So they might aswell come forward with some info and let us know when this will be fixed.

The "let us know when this will be fixed" question is very relevant. It would be interesting to know how this problem had an impact on Apple sales during this big shopping weekend. I, for one, was seriously ready to buy an Ipad Pro, but will not until they get the email fixed. Also in the market for a phone upgrade. What are sales people at the Apple Store, Best Buy, etc. telling people who buy hardware running IOS 9.1? What happens when their customers get their machines home and find out they don't work? Love to know how the Geek Squad is handling this one. This is why the "let us know when it will be fixed question" is critical. There is an old rule in public relations: the sooner you admit a mistake the better. Apologize, say you won't let it happen again and move on is the strategy. By not saying anything Apple has let down existing and potential customers to say nothing of the poor salespeople who must figure out how to deal with the issue. I still believe the glitch is a result of the new backup strategy and that Apple will have to do some major code rewriting to fix it. I think they are hoping people will do like some of my friends and just throw up their hands and switch from Pop. The lack of response from Apple is troubling in this regard. Perhaps like some of the trolls on various sites they regard Pop users as Neanderthals. Apple only has a month to fix the problem, otherwise there are going to be a lot of howls from underneath a lot of Christmas trees.

This is happening on our iPads too. Not happy:(