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, Sent emails reside on the iPhone not the server. That only points to a defect within iOS9. Using cc or bcc to yourself at another host will work because you are saving the data on another device and it will work irrespective of whether it's being sent to a PC or Mac.

THe Mail app doesn't even allocate any memory for sent mail, being that sent mail is supposed to be stored on the device that created it. My mail app only allocates a little over 14 Mbytes, no matter how many mails and attachments are in my sent folder...an obvious bug for sure! I remember pre ios9, my mail app used to take up a whopping 1.2-1.4 Gigabytes of memory, and that wasn't changeable, no matter how few or many mail msgs I had in my inbox or sent folders.

Trying to find logic or reason is to no avail because none of what's happening can make sense to anyone who doesn't understand the code that was written. I certainly do not. I did the update to iOS9.0.2 and saw no change except that I found the available space on the phone that was 2GB before the update, is now 7.9GB. Can't figure that one so I've given up searching for a plausible explanation. I am backing up all of the content in Mail that I want saved to another device and will just wait until Apple releases a fix.

Well, unless Apple sort this soon then I will try and put IOS8 back on my old iphone5 and hope to continue as before. The new iphone 6s I have just bought will be returned next as not fit for purpose.

I have set up an IMAP account which appear to be working and downloading attachments but then when I download the emails on my laptop the messages are deleted immediately form my iphone. Is there a way to stop this.

Next step refund on new iphone 6s as not fit for purpose, sell all ipads and say hello Android

android soon wrote:

I have set up an IMAP account which appear to be working and downloading attachments but then when I download the emails on my laptop the messages are deleted immediately form my iphone. Is there a way to stop this.

If your laptop is set up as POP and is set to delete messages from the server when downloaded, that will delete the messages from any IMAP clients that connect to that server. For IMAP to work the way it is intended all clients must be configured as IMAP. So the way to stop it is to reconfigure your laptop as IMAP or change the setting to leave messages on the server.

Next step refund on new iphone 6s as not fit for purpose, sell all ipads and say hello Android

That's a great idea! Move off the unreliable, buggy, poorly supported Apple products to Android, the PERFECT platform that never has any problems and that no one ever reports problems with, so no technical support is ever needed. Which is why there isn't any.

BTW, we're just users here; no one cares what you do. So there's no point in making idle (or real) threats.

I am here in Australia and I have the same issues. I can also tell you that Australia's mail email server uses POP so I am surprised that more users are not arcing up of the issue. Lets just hope that Apple get the message and get it sorted soon. Never the less, it is unforgivable that anything should have occurred that deleted emails. These are a model day Life's Blood!

I gave up testing different configurations and talking to Apple Support. I switched to Outlook on iOS as a short term solution. It works fine with my multiple email accounts - gmail, Comcast, and integrates with Apple Mail on my Mac.

I couldn't find anything in the iOS 9.0.2 that states they have fixed the problem.

I have this issue too and have lost some emails I purposely had kept on my iPad for convenience - I probably do have most of them backed up on my laptop so, while it's annoying for me, it hasn't been catastrophic.


As suggested, I reported this to Apple last week but haven't had an acknowledgement let alone a response.

I can't see why they thought there was a need to try and re-download messages that already had been downloaded - after all, we're not always connected and might just want to look at the contents of an earlier email. Unless they were trying to improve Mail's garbage collection or memory usage - prior to this I could have a handful of small messages in my iPad inbox, trash emptied as well, but the mail app would still occupy hundreds of mb on my iPad. I could only free up the memory by deleting and re-instating that mail account.

It was probably a well intentioned but badly executed change...

Unfortunately Apple only tends to respond to these problems when the media turns them into headlines. None of the Mac centric websites are reporting the issue so it has not been picked up by technical writers in the mainstream media. It would seem POP accounts are on the wane with the greater majority using IMAP and being blissfully unaware of the problem. The more noise affected users generate, by filing complaints with Apple and spreading the word on Mac sites, the quicker this will be resolved. Past history makes this very clear.

If anyone is hoping iOS 9.1 will resolve the issue, don't hold your breath - the problem still exists in the latest beta.

Does anyone know approx how many POP users WW might have been impacted by this issue? (I assume 'all' of them, but was curious what size user base this might be). Are we talking 10's of thousands or much more? I read that Apple sold 75M phones just in Q1 this year - are the vast majority of users with personal email accounts on IMAP and not impacted? I'm a bit embarrassed that didn't even know about IMAP until my email got wiped out with iOS 9, mainly because that is how my email was always configured by default (and not to be resistant to change at all, I just preferred POP for my style of usage). I assume there are ISP's in the U.S. and possibly countries where IMAP is not even an option?

I know with the OS X wi-fi issue Re/code and other media sources picked up and followed the story. It's reassuring to read that Apple has contacted some users here and has indicated that they are investigating. But not sure what to expect in terms of an ETA if POP is perceived as out of favor.

Appreciate the support, assistance and community here - many thanks and please continue to share any updates.

Our business network uses a POP mail server that we host in house. The mail client on my laptop removes messages after they are retrieved, while my iPhone is set to Never remove messages from the server. I fail to understand why (1) irrespective of whether a device is set to remove messages from the server, why that should effect mail that has already been retrieved because once a message is retrieved from a POP server the message then resides on the retrieving device, and (2) why this should be impacting messages in the Sent mailbox since mail that was already sent should be unrelated to a POP server. I'm interested in knowing whether anyone sees this differently. My read is iOS9 has a flaw that Apple's engineers have to first isolate/identify.

I've also found after emailing a photo to myself using the iPhone to send/receive that the Inbox message shows the photo but the message in Sent mail shows only the message not downloaded wording. I've also seen a message in the Inbox lose the attachment and then at a later time having it return. Now that's pretty far out there.

Others have mentioned this and I have to agree with them. I think it is a memory issue. I added my Yahoo POP which is set to never delete from the server, it is also set that way on my iPhone. I receive larger files through this and although the message "Message has not been downloaded from the server" doesn't appear, I have to "tap" to download the attachments every time I want to see them even though they have been "downloaded" several times to my phone.

Is the setting "Load Remote Images" in your "Mail, Contacts, and Calendars" section turn on? Images in email won't automatically load when that setting is turned off.

The Load Remote Images setting being turned on does not cure this. Mine is on and I sometimes receive a jpg file that only opens after I tap it. Sometimes being the operative word.

I have that same issue but intermittently not constantly. It must be an issue within the architecture of iOS9.

Use the feedback link to let Apple's engineers know about this.