[Update 1 - I switched to IMAP instead of POP on both my iPhone and desktop client and configured the desktop client to never remove messages after downloading. IMAP seems to be much more stable in general on the iPhone and also keeps read/unread status in sync between the phone and desktop. I'd recommend IMAP if it's available to you.]
[Update 2 - A few people have posted annoyed replies in response to my post. All I can say is that there may be multiple causes to this problem, but the one I found is easily verified and reproduced. Some people mis-read into my post that IMAP alone is the solution, this is not true. I will say that I have not personally heard of this error happening to anyone who is not running multiple email clients. I would recommend taking a close look at any running email client and double-check that none of them are set to remove messages from the server after downloading. IMAP or POP is irrelevant, either protocol can be used and the client may still be removing messages. GMail or any other webmail can be a culprit as well.]
[Original Post Below]
I have my iPhone set to retrieve email messages from my POP3 account. This works great except that about every 10th message would show “This message has not been downloaded from the server” instead of the message text.
I discovered that this was not actually a problem with the iPhone, rather with my email setup. I also have Outlook on my desktop which is configured to delete messages from the server after downloading. What happens is that the iPhone downloads the headers of all messages in the inbox, but only downloads the body of the messages from the server one at a time as you view them. (This is done for speed and bandwidth on the mobile device.) Meanwhile, if Outlook is open on my desktop it is automatically downloading all new messages and immediately deleting them from the server. The iPhone still shows the email headers in the inbox, but when you go to view the message it is unable to retrieve it from the server because it was deleted by Outlook . So there is no way for the iPhone to get the message body because the message no longer exists on the server.
It would make sense if the iPhone would re-load the inbox, in which case you would not see all of those deleted messages. However, my guess is that this is another bandwidth/performance issue to keep the headers constantly in sync.
There is a fairly simple work-around to this problem. Just configure your desktop email client so it doesn’t immediately remove messages after downloading. In my case using Outlook, there is a setting to leave mail on the server for X days (I set mine to 3 days). This resolved the issue for me entirely, however if I try to read an email on the iPhone that is more than 3 days old it won’t be available. Basically the number of days you configure your client to retain messages on the server is how far back they will be available via your iPhone. For me 3 days is plenty. However, if you want to have access to older messages you can set the retention to 30 days or whatever your email client and host will allow.
This may explain the problem, but I believe it is a flaw in the system – a serious flaw if you are a business user. The phone appears to download headers only, and then download the message when you check it, but the phone does not store the messages is downloads – it only stores the headers – so that when your desktop Outlook downloads and removes the message from the server, what you thought was on the phone is not. This does not occur with blackberrys, which store and save all emails downloaded. From my observation, it also does not seem to work 100% that way – some messages seem to be retrievable on my iphone after outlook has downloaded, but others come up with the error message – this suggests a glitch.
As a business user, this is a very serious flaw, and despite its many other positive features I would switch to blackberry.
Hey Dan, thanks for the interesting comment. You are right that the iPhone only downloads the headers but once you read a message, the body is stored on the phone. I can verify this since I’m still able to read some messages from a few days ago that are definitely not on the server any longer. This is just a guess on my part, but I think that the iPhone may possibly download the entire message in some cases where it is really small. Likewise it may not keep the message stored locally if it’s really huge. This would account for the seemingly random behavior. Like many things Apple, they don’t really tell us what magic is happening behind the curtain. (These are not the droids you are looking for)
I did have a blackberry for about 1 year. I personally developed a deep and intense hatred of that phone for various reasons, but I will have to agree with you that the email functionality is very slick. My complaint was that everything else about it sucked! Mind you this was 2 years ago and the newer blackberrys look a lot cooler. Now that I figured out the Outlook configuration, I would say that the iPhone email works just as well for my needs. My only gripe is that there is no “mark all as read” feature which is highly annoying.
I’ve only had my iPhone for about 5 days, but I’ll keep posting as I learn more about it.
This is a VERY annoying “feature” of the iPhone and it is indded erreatic at best. I often receive e-mail messages that remain on the server (POP3) but I cnnot access them via the iPhone. After much investigation there appears to be no rhyme or reason!
Hmm, it seems some people are experiencing the problem even when the message is still on the server? I haven’t had the error since changing my Outlook settings, but it’s still only been a few days.
I think that there is a more serius problem. i create a completely new gmail email acount to view mail in my iphone. then, in my MAIN gmail acount (that is configured to be accesed by outlook) i create a forward setting (in gmail config page), so, all the mail that i recive in the main mail acount is recived also in the iphone mail acount. in 10 messages with atachments, http designs and other stuff, 2 of them have the “This message has not been downloaded from the server”. I think that the iphone mail app is very bad.
Has any one had a problem with the iPhone dowloading your email and then it not downloading in outlook? I have looked and there are no settings on the phone to leave a copy on the server like in outlook. This only happens with some mesages, some i get on the phone and outlook, some I dont. Any Ideas?
Cheers mate, did as stated, set the server in outlook to 10 days, not only received the emails, managed to download my fist PDF doc at last.
newbie to iphone
Switch to IMAP on the iPhone to solve “this message has not been downloaded from the server” problem. Using Gmail as an example, do not create a default POP Gmail account on the iPhone, start out creating an “other” type of email account to get to the IMAP option. For step-by-step instructions, including how to specify a different “from” email address if needed, then read my blog entry at http://slapphappe.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/iphone-mail-this-message-has-not-been-downloaded-from-the-server/.
Iphone i think were designed not meant exactly for business use instead its a trendy phone which comes up with unique features. Maybe there are some apps where you can maximise its capability(iphone) when it comes to business related task. Other wise you can switch to blackberry.. as you said. which is better coz they provide business related features not only the phone itself but through its network provider. Well it is still depends on what you need of course.
I agree that the iPhone is trendy, but not about it’s business usage. I have phones from various vendors that I carry around with me for testing. They all have strengths, but as far as business use or anything else the main difference is just the way they are marketed.
Is there not a setting using POP to leave a copy on server?? Really?
Not everyone has the option of using IMAP.
Anyone?
Once again I am left supporting more crap from Apple for my mother in law. LOL!
for pop in outlook, you can go to Tools/email-accounts/view or change existing email account/
select change under pop account, under Advance tab
at bottom of tab you will see the retention setup on leave a copy on server. Cheers!
@Chris
There is a setting. Settings >> Mail >> youraccount >> Advanced.
One setting is for deleted messages (removing from trash) and just below authentication setting there is ‘Delete from server’ setting. By default set to ‘Never’
Great write up. The iPhone is truly revolutionary and I don’t like being without it. This time last year I had jumped in a pool with my iPhone and it was dead. I had to wait 9 days before I was able to buya new one. The phone I had was a cheap go phone. I really love all the games that can be downloaded to the iPhone. The best part about the iPhone to me is the ability to check emails on the fly. Thanks for the information.
Changing the Outlook to keep it on the server worked for me.
This definitely works if you’ve been using a POP3 setting on your iPhone/iPad. By changing to IMAP, it seems to fix itself and download all emails with their content, not just some.
Thanks for this post – it saved me from losing 6 customers all having the same problem and all blaming the web server I provide.
But why can’t Apple and web hosting companies like eNom provide this simple answer. Apple blamed the web hosting and eNom blamed Apple.
And I was caught in the middle!!
Thank goodness for blogs – well done.
I have set my Outlook as proposed leaving messages on the server and I still get the problem regularly. I can even have Outlook closed off so that it is not retrieving mail and I still get the problem. For example I was away on holiday for 2 weeks with everything at the office shut down and I still received this message on some e-mails. And of course it’s always the messages that I really need to read!
How do you manage to delete the messages from you iPhone? I have a series of emails with this issue but the phone will not delete any of them, I just get an error message when I try.
Thanks
If you’re using IMAP there’s a setting on the iPhone. Go to Settings -> Mail -> (your account name) -> Account -> Advanced
You may need to specify your Trash folder. When you delete a message on the phone, it should move it to the Trash folder on the server. There’s also a setting to specify when you delete a message on the phone, when it will be deleted on the server.
This is a very flawed analysis of the problem. I have tried switching to IMAP and it has made absolutely no difference. Moreover, my mail downloads from a server that retains copies of all mails and does not alter their status in any way when any given client downloads them, so that they may be downloaded by multiple clients; so the suggestion that this is some kind of timing problem does not hold water. Furthermore, I am experiencing the problem even when I ensure that the iPhone is the first device to download any mail. Testing also shows the problem to be random – if the same mail is sent multiple times, it will generally download perfectly but 10% to 20% of downloads will exhibit the no content problem. My mobile provider appears to have no solution to offer and Apple have no interest at all in providing support.
It’s not really a flawed analysis, but obviously there are other scenarios. What I can say is that the iPhone automatically downloads only the headers. When you go to view the message it will retrieve the message body. It does this by contacting the server and asking it for the message with the specific message ID that it was given in the headers. Well that’s the way all emails clients work anyway. I’ve written email client software in the past, but it’s been a while. This is basically the same regardless of POP or IMAP.
When you get this error – for whatever reason the iPhone couldn’t get the message from the server. Basically the email client says “give me email 12345″ and the server returns “there is no email with id 12345.” So the iPhone has still the headers for the message but a message with that ID is not on the server. One reason that I have verified is that another client has deleted the message from the server, as I write about in this article. I don’t know other reasons, but it could be that the message IDs are getting screwed up, there’s a network error, there’s some incompatibility with a particular server software or even a bug in the iPhone Mail app. Unfortunately I don’t have the answer.
If I were to trouble-shoot this issue what I would do is use a packet inspector on my network or something to see what the iPhone is actually sending to the server. You would have to turn off email encryption to do this and use a hub (not a switch) so you can inspect packets from another computer. I would probably look at the message IDs and see if the iPhone has the wrong ID or something. Obviously this is something only a network admin type of person is going to do. So unfortunately it’s not a solution, but it is probably the only way to really see what’s happening under the hood.
I totally agree with David Murray.
* It IS a problem with the iPhone/iPad – I don’t have this problem with my mail accounts using any other email client with any other OS
* I confirm it has nothing to do with settings on other email clients as my iPhone or iPad are in the first line of retrieval.
* it seems to be random and is a real pain
* If the problem is that “it is not meant for business use” (quote from above) then think again – even as a non-business application, isn’t the email that somebody has sent supposed to be readable by the recipient??
I would say try to do some troubleshooting to figure out if you can reproduce the problem consistently. If you can do that, then you should be able to go to Apple support online or the genius bar and demonstrate your situation. If the problem can’t be reproduced consistently, then it makes it much more difficult to solve.
It simply has to be something with your particular setup. I don’t mean to say it is your fault or even anything obvious. It probably is some obscure side effect that a normal user would have no way of knowing. With the popularity of the device if this was a wide-spread problem we would all be seeing it in the news or at least tech blogs. There are a lot of posts on the Apple support forum but most of them are quite old before the iPhone supported IMAP.
Just to repeat – I know for a fact that it happens when the message is no longer on the server. One way to check this is if your email host has a web client or you can SSH in and directly look at the mailbox (not through a desktop client) and really see what is on the server. Because when you use the phone or a desktop client you are always looking at a copy of the mailbox.
I have had my iPad only a few days but am already frustrated with this problem. I use outlook on my MS Laptop, a Nokia phone and now my iPad for my POP email.
I have never had any problems on either my Laptop or my Nokia phone so the problem is in the iPad or the settings, even although the settings in the Nokia phone and iPad are identical.
It seems nonsense that the iPadonly downloads heading and not the whole email… because I have tested this and in my case, downloads the whole message in one go.
However, I seem to have more trouble with large messages than with short ones and wondered if the iPad was timing out during the email recieve process.
I remember a problem I had once with TalkTalk who I use currently and had to modify my MTU setting in my router because I could not recieve large emails … is there a setting like this in the iPad that is incorrect… such that the message fails if over a certain size? Just a thought.