Problems with mail in iOS 9

Rather than just depend on Notes (another Apple app) for your backup/workaround, and as long as you're switching apps anyway, consider something that uses a *different* cloud or local storage.

I use OneNote, but there's also Evernote (quite popular) and probably others; and for "local" there are various office & note-taking apps.

That's what I've been doing, anyway. I rarely do mail-compose/send on my phone but I do often take notes.

What I really miss in this "new improved" system is being able to refer back to emails -- I really don't want to copy them all one-by-one to my other apps!

I just updated to ios 9.1 and the missing content is still gone. Apparently the Apple Mail app is programmed to assume that any complex content (graphics, etc.) can be reloaded from the server at any time, so it doesn't bother to retain it. I suppose this is meant to save device memory. There's a remark in the release notes about pop counter being reset, but that's clearly not the problem. I'm trialling altamail in parallel, and it's solid so far. It's only negative is that the free version handles only one account.

That doesn't explain why some messages w/ graphics are still "there" and some that are just text are gone (but I can still read the preview lines!).

Thanks for the tip about Altamail.

I Have now installed 9.1, and the problem is still there.

Apple please help us !

still testing 9.1 to see if any improvement...

Interesting article - I don't see any reference to our POP email issue here.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/10/22/apple-ios-9-1-admits-problems /

OTOH they do mention a problem (albeit a different problem) w/ POP mail, so at least they admit that POP mail isn't completely off-the-table as an option.

And 9.1 gave us all those new emojis to not be able to see in our old messages a day later!

BFD & whoop-dee-doo.

I've held off replying until I have given sufficient time post the 9.1 update to confirm we are clear. Here are my observations:

1. We have update an iPhone 6, iPhone 5c iPad 3 and iPad Air 2 To 9.1. All we're exhibiting identical symptoms post upgrade to iOS 9. All our email accounts are pop.

2. I have had iOS 9.1 running on my iPhone 6 since last night. All emails that I have received today are still present. There have been no cases of "this message has not been downloaded from the server" in any of the emails received post update.

3. Unsurprisingly older messages already affected have not been recovered.

4. I noticed a lag when opening emails with graphics or pictures. When I select airplane mode the email text is unaffected but the pictures are not shown only the empty frame placeholder. I can confirm that data is being used to download these images (from where? More to follow).

5. Attachments such as PDFs are not affected by lack of a data service (good news) so whilst not pretty pop emails are once again functional when off the grid (important for me in a rural area).

6. When I got home I downloaded today's emails to the computer which removes them from the email provider server. all of today's emails were still accessible despite the original no longer being present in the email provider server or any of the folders. I even turned the iMac off so there could be no weird back channel to the only other version of the email.

7. When I select airplane mode the pictures in emails still disappear, when I select airplane mode off the pictures reappear with a slight data usage (difficult to attribute categorically) where is this data being cached???

in summary - based on a sample of one uk email provider (BT) and 4 iOS devices from iPad 3 iPhone 5c to iPhone 6 iPad Air 2, pop/smttp email is functional again on iOS 9.1. Text and attachments appear to remain on the device even when data connection is lost and the email is no longer available on the server. Something has definitely changed and it's certainly not pretty, I'm also a little concerned that my email is being stored in another location. So good news with caveats

Was initially hopeful, but for me the issue still exists - no improvement at all in this release. Which suggests that it may never be coming at this point. Quite disappointing.

The problem is still there after the update!! Luckily I still have a PC with Windows where downloaded emails do remain. Tush Apple!!

Since, at least for me, messages didn't disappear until the *next* day, same-day-retention isn't a change.

I'll have to see tomorrow if today's messages are still "there" -- but I'm certainly not hopeful about it.

At least the headers are still there, & the preview lines -- so I can flag messages to review/handle later from my PC, as I can see the date & subject they're about.

I have been having the same problem since the 9.0 update, but what I noticed is that when I delete certain e-mails from my Comcast account on my computer, the "message not downloaded from the server" appears on some of my e-mails on my iPhone, but not all. It seems that e-mails from people who's e-mail addresses I have seem to not be affected. I haven't had any e-mails just disappear though, just content if I've deleted the e-mail on my computer. When I called Apple for help, the technician had no idea what the problem was and was going to have me completely restart my phone and reinstall the update. Since the 9.0 update, my phone has been acting completely crazy as well . . . calendar gets messed up, typing texts is super slow, etc.

Update to my post last night. I spoke too soon. This morning many of yesterday's messages are now unavailable with the now familiar message. Apologies for getting people's hopes up - a good lesson for me in waiting before posting. It took over 24 hours for the issue to re-manifest itself. i had cleared my inbox following the upgrade and therefore I can categorically say that these are emails that were received post upgrade. All of the other posters are correct, the issue remains at 9.1. Sorry for posting duff information!

My wife and I both have the same problems. My wife has been very unlucky - she has lost the entire contents of her googlemail online account (about 4000 emails) and the few copies she had saved on her iPad have gone as well. We have no idea why. The only clue is that the account was a POP account and iOS 9 turned on IMAP for it. It was not a gmail account but an old googlemail account (she prefers googlemmil).

iOS 9 has been a complete waste of time - there are NO features on it that we are remotely interested in and it has massed up our system. Coming hot on the heels of El Crapitan (not a miss spelling) they have both done severe damage. I have posted about EC elsewhere.

Fortunately I have an old Windows Vista laptop that works properly and my email is still functional. My trust in Apple technology is severely reduced.

As penance for incorrectly calling the resolution of the issue following the iOS 9.1 upgrade I have spent the evening drafting a new fault description for the apple feedback site. Feel free to copy from this post and submit as many times as you like at http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Subject:

iOS9 issue with pop/smtp email

Description:

Following upgrade to iOS 9, the content of emails downloaded to pop/smtp email accounts are randomly lost after roughly 24 hrs. The email content is replaced by the message: This message has not been downloaded from the server. The same email accounts on an iMac running OS X Yosemite & another iOS devices still running iOS 8 do not exhibit this behaviour. The 4 iOS devices upgraded to iOS 9 (iphone 6 & 5c, iPad 3 & air2) all exhibit the same behaviour.The same behaviour has been confirmed at iOS 9.0, 9.01, 9.02 and 9.1. Unlike ios8, when mobile data is not available on the iOS9 devices image content is lost from downloaded emails.Loss of the email content is unrelated to emails presence on the email provider's server. This iOS9 bug has resulted in the loss of irreplaceable user email data.

I have this problem also but I only lose the content and get the message if the email has an attachment.

Hope this helps