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?

Sorry to hear that! Thought that it was solved because my attachments used to disappear within a few hours and currently they're still intact from this morning, but after reading your experience my hope is once again dwindling. Vanishing documents are not going to gain them any respect among business / corporate customers but I guess that's not the market that they're going for anyway.

When will this end??? Lost all my tickets, confirmations, bookings; the lot! This is a practical disaster; can't believe that Apple are not all over it already!

I am not technically smart and don't know if this helps but this was my experience today. I had two lengthy online chats with Apple support today, the latter with a Senior Advisor. After explaining the problem he said 'This is a known issue with some email providers. The reason behind it is with IOS9 security features have been updated and email settings might need to be updated.' He advised calling my email provider's technical support as from his experience 'the solution is in the settings' of the email provider. I have a bt.connect.com account (a UK business account / POP account). I went onto their website and set up a new account using my usual email address. The settings for both the incoming and outgoing mail servers were different and were described on the site as compatible with the latest ISO. So I now have the same email address on two accounts with different settings. I have not deleted the original account so mail is coming into both - the same email address with different settings. The good news is I have not lost any content or had the dreaded 'not downloaded' message for over 10 hours when previously it was happening within a couple of hours. No old emails have been retrieved but no new ones have been lost. Fingers crossed! Please forgive any technological naivity, I just need email to function and right now it seems to be.

You wrote:

"I am not technically smart and don't know if this helps but this was my experience today. I had two lengthy online chats with Apple support today, the latter with a Senior Advisor. After explaining the problem he said 'This is a known issue with some email providers. The reason behind it is with IOS9 security features have been updated and email settings might need to be updated.' He advised calling my email provider's technical support as from his experience 'the solution is in the settings' of the email provider. I have a bt.connect.com account (a UK business account / POP account). I went onto their website and set up a new account using my usual email address. The settings for both the incoming and outgoing mail servers were different and were described on the site as compatible with the latest ISO. So I now have the same email address on two accounts with different settings. I have not deleted the original account so mail is coming into both - the same email address with different settings. The good news is I have not lost any content or had the dreaded 'not downloaded' message for over 10 hours when previously it was happening within a couple of hours. No old emails have been retrieved but no new ones have been lost. Fingers crossed! Please forgive any technological naivity, I just need email to function and right now it seems to be."

This sounds like the person at Apple support merely deflected the problem away from Apple. This is not an issue caused by BT or any other ISP. It's solely due to iOS9 forcing POP accounts to behave like IMAP accounts.

Try this from a post by Vrago:

OK, actually I did what was referred to in LadyGatr's post above.

FYI, I use my pop account to look at incoming mail while I am out in the field during the day, and then have everything go to Outlook Mail on my mac (my master mail copy) when I connect the mac. If you are doing something else, this may not be good for you.

Specifically, here is what I did to resolve the problem :

Go to Settings: -> Mail Contacts, Calendar

Under accounts, click on the pop account that isn't working (i.e. the account got somehow turned into IMAP by ios 9.0.2). This takes you to the IMAP screen. Mail will be 'on', toggle it off. When you return to Mail accounts screen, your pop account should show inactive.

then click 'Add Account' and select your account type from the list- mine is 'other'.

Under Other, select 'add mail account'.

Enter your name, then under email and password enter something gobbledygook that you know won't work for these two entries, and then select Next. It will say something like 'looking up account' and 'verifying', and then 'cannot get mail' pops up. Hit OK. Then at the top right you will see the button you need to make it POP instead of IMAP. Click that and then scroll down and correct the email address and password for your pop account. Then hit next.

As soon as I did that, my mail started coming in correctly. Somehow it figured out all the other settings for my ISP mail server.

Hope this helps.

I lost all my old mail on the phone, but at least I can get the new mail on the iphone and go back to my Mac Outlook for anything old I need. Better than a useless mail app in the phone.

I previously went through the steps you described and forced the new account screen for POP account creation / rebuilt my POP account etc. But in my case it did not solve the ongoing issue of losing new incoming / outgoing POP messages / "this message has not been downloaded from server" / on the rebuilt POP account. The rebuilt POP account itself operates, messages come in and out, but after a period of time (some users on these boards report 12-24 hours) the body of messages (some, not all messages) will be lost again and just the header with the 'not been downloaded' will show.

As a test I also added a new parallel IMAP account. Exactly the same as my rebuilt POP but configured as IMAP. So am running the same account in POP and IMAP side by side. The IMAP account works - if I wanted IMAP would be set. The POP account 'operates' - but after messages come in or out and some period of time elapses - the content on most of the POP messages continues to be stripped away and the ' has not been downloaded' issue continues to be present, at least that is my current experience.

HELP! not just the old messages now! Come on Apple⚠

Hi AndroidEnvy, I am 100% in agreement with you. I also deleted and recreated my POP account many times in the early days of this problem (and after each IOS 9 update), but eventually the content and attachments would be stripped away. Like you I also created a test IMAP account, and the content does not disappear. And yes, like you, if I wanted my mail to run on IMAP, I would already be doing it.

Good luck Rontu2, fingers crossed, I sincerely hope this fix works for you ... but sadly I have my doubts 😕.

That may be true but it has worked for me. i have not lost any content in the past 24 hours.

@catherinefromgla - could you let us know what the changed settings were? Like others, I'm doubtful it's got anything to do with your ISP but would be happy to be proved wrong.

Re you not losing anything (yet), the issue doesn't appear consistent, and may be size and time related - have all your recent emails been relatively small with no attachments, and do you use a laptop to access them as well where its mail client is configured to delete the emails from the server once they've been downloaded?

it seems that the ios9 Mail app is trying to download the message again every time you open the app. I'm on holiday just now without my laptop, so all my recent emails are still on the server, and I check my mail daily. If I switch off wifi, I get the 'not downloaded' message for emails I've just read, which reappear (I.e. are redownloaded) when I switch wifi on again. That doesn't sound like ISP settings at all...

(PS i suppose the follow up to what I say about switching off wifi would mean you couldn't, for example, download all your emails before leaving home and expect to be able to read all of them later when you don't have a wifi connection. Like you used to be able to do...)

I cant refuse from trying, so I configured new Mail accounts with some different credentials. My provider changed or added new server names. All my other devices (Linux and Windows) work with the 'old' as well as with the new credentials.

Result: No change on IOS 9! But this time some new hint: Quite some time passed and everything looked good. I closed the mail app, rebooted my Ipad everything fine. Then suddenly my mail app still did something, but the preview pane was greyed out, only the navigation pane on the left screen side was functioning. After closing and reopening the mail app, the app worked again, but my mails with attachments had been gone. (I downloaded the mails meanwhile to my laptop, of course).

Thanks O4aTimtam, it's now 13 hours since the last emails with attached files arrived and so far they are still showing the attached files. Hoping that remains the case 12 hours from now so fingers crossed.

A POP account on iOS9 mail continuing to try downloading messages that were previously retrieved sounds like iOS9 Mail is forces the mail client to act like an IMAP account despite it having been configured as a POP.

I ask myself why iOS9 by default creates an IMAP mail account and does not even show an option for a POP account unless iOS9 fails to create an IMAP account due to flawed username/password data. This keeps pointing to the same place - Apple's code used in the architecture of iOS9 mail.

Thanks everyone for sharing input and please keep using the feedback link.

Please let us know if you continue to retain messages without losing content. I sure hope that's case!

After a week of losing email content within a matter of hours with no logic I could figure out, I am pleased to say I have lost nothing in the past 24 hours, including emails with pictures attached. Mail is coming to both the btconnect.com accounts I have set up - although both have different settings which I don't understand. Since I added the second one yesterday morning I have lost nothing. If it is of any help my settings page on the btconnect.com I added yesterday reads -

POP Account Information

incoming mail server - host name outlook.office365.com

outgoing mail server - smtp.office365.com

My original account (same email address) which was having the problem has different settings -

POP Account Information

incoming mail server - pop.outlook.com

outgoing mail server - smtp.outlook.com

As I said, I don't know much and I am sure many of you guys are more savvy but after a frustrating week I am just glad to be retaining emails on both iphone and ipad!

Rontu2 wrote:

I ask myself why iOS9 by default creates an IMAP mail account and does not even show an option for a POP account unless iOS9 fails to create an IMAP account due to flawed username/password data. This keeps pointing to the same place - Apple's code used in the architecture of iOS9 mail.

Also ask yourself why iOS 8 by default creates an IMAP account, and why iOS 7 by default created an IMAP account, and why iOS 6 by default created an IMAP account. This is not new behavior; it's the way iOS has worked for over 3 years. See this tip, created for iOS 6 originally: Forcing creation of a POP or IMAP email account

It's also not true that iOS by default creates an IMAP account. When you add an email account iOS "asks" the email server what services it offers. If the server responds "POP" a POP3 account is created. If it responds "IMAP" an IMAP account is created. If it doesn't answer the question at all a POP3 account is created (which is why you can force creation of a POP account by entering an invalid server name or credentials). It has only been recently that some cable providers have offered IMAP accounts, so accounts created until very recently (earlier this year) on most cable provider email servers were POP.