How can I stop iPhone from auto-downloading email?

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Level 1

9 points

How can I stop iPhone from auto-downloading email?

I have email set up on my iPhone. Every time I open the Mail app, any unread emails currently on the server at my ISP are automatically downloaded to the iPhone. I don't want this. So I went into settings, tapped "Mail, Contacts, Calendars," and I set "Fetch New Data" to OFF. Is that not the setting to allow auto-downloads of data from whatever server I'm connected to? Since I set it to OFF, it should therefore not allow emails to be downloaded automatically. If that's not the right setting to do this, could someone tell me what I should do? I don't see anything else related to downloading in that group of settings.

Also, yesterday, I was on my laptop at home. I was waiting to get an email from someone, so I kept checking. After several hours, I still hadn't gotten it, so I wrote the person to ask why, and they said that they DID send it. So I checked my phone, and there it was. Why did the email get deleted from my server? It's bad enough that emails are auto-downloaded to the phone, but on top of that, they're deleted from the server so I can't access them from any other device?

Can someone tell me how to make sure that neither of these things happens? I probably need to configure two different settings.

Thank you!

iPhone 5s, iOS 9.3.2

Posted on Jun 16, 2017 5:50 PM

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Answer 1

elcpu

Level 7

31,481 points

Jun 16, 2017 6:11 PM in response to Joyce3

Reconfigure your email account as IMAP.

Set up an email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Then go to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data > and:

Turn Push to OFF

Set Fetch to Manually

Keep in mind that even that way when you open the Mail app it will fetch.

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Answer 2

Jun 16, 2017 5:54 PM in response to Joyce3

There is no way to stop the mail app on an iPhone from downloading pending mail when you open the app. Indeed, almost all mail apps on any platform will do this.

As to why the email was deleted from the server, this will happen with a POP account if the mail app is configured to delete email from the server after downloading. If it is not a POP account it shouldn't be happening.

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Answer 3

Joyce3 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 16, 2017 6:44 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thank you.

Is there an easy way to tell whether it's a POP or IMAP account? It took very little to set it up. All I did was provide my ISP, maybe one other thing (can't remember at the moment). I didn't have to enter any IP addresses or select which type of email account it was, etc, as I would have to if configuring email from an application on a PC.

If this is a POP account, how do I configure it so it won't delete emails from the server? If you look at the other response I got below, from elcpu, it says to go to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data and set Push to OFF. I did this a couple of days ago (ie, before asking this question). I also set Fetch to "Manually." And for the most part, emails that are downloaded to the phone do not get deleted from the server. But yesterday, about 5 emails did get deleted after they were sent to my phone. It has not happened today. I have no idea what is different, as I haven't changed any configuration settings. Maybe it was a fluke?

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Answer 4

Jun 16, 2017 6:47 PM in response to Joyce3

Maybe they weren't deleted from the server. Check your spam folder.

To find out what type of account it is go to Settings/Mail, select the account and it will say "POP" or "IMAP" at the top of the page.

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Answer 5

Joyce3 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 16, 2017 7:00 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks again. It's an IMAP account. And I had already done everything that elcpu suggested, so it shouldn't be fetching email unless I open the app.

Those few emails that were deleted yesterday weren't in my spam folder. I will poke around to see if they might've ended up somewhere else.

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