Apple Mail App losing messages

[dbm]

Hi,

My wife has an iPhone 4S running 6.1.3 (which appears to be the latest version for the 4S). Occasionally, when her Mail app does a send /receive the messages which were already in the Inbox get lost and only the new messages are shown. The lost messages do not appear in her Trash folder. The mail is a POP account.

My email runs from the same POP service, and the connection details appear identical except that the is a slight difference in the fields available on my phone which is an iPhone 5 running 6.1.4.

Anyone seen this problem before? Any suggestions on how to resolve it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[bobtomay]

6.1.4 is a speakerphone update for the iPhone 5 only.

Sounds like she has her recent mail count set too low.
Settings - Mail, Contacts, Calendars - under the Mail section, select Show and set the count to whichever she wants.

 

[dbm]

Thanks for the suggestion, I have upped the threshold from 50 to 100 and will see if that helps.

My wife only seemed to have about 15 emails in her inbox the last time this happened. Can anyone suggest anything else to try?

 

[chas_m]

The obvious solution is to dump that antiquated POP account and forward or better yet move to an IMAP account.

Here's the basic problem: POP is designed to be checked on one machine, and for the most part it moves emails to your machine and then deletes them off the server since it doesn't have much room (very often around 10MB or so ... one attachment can fill up the mailbox easily!).

Now one can tinker with these settings but that's how it is suppose to work. You can see the problem: check your mail on one device, you see everything; check it on another device and suddenly lots of stuff isn't there.

Worse still, it doesn't know how to show you only mail you haven't already read, or what the status of a given email is on the second device. Basically it's just no good for a world where people check email on multiple devices (as basically everyone does nowadays).

Open a free IMAP account (iCloud, Google, Yahoo, AOL ... etc etc) and forward your POP mail (using your ISP's webmail page) to the IMAP account. Problem solved, and over time the POP account use will just dry up and people will be using the IMAP account for your email.

 

[dbm]

Whilst that might solve the problem it isn't a viable answer for me, thanks. I own my own domain and that is the root of all my family's email addresses.

With regards to how POP works, I understand that thanks. The problem is that emails were in my wife's inbox on her phone, then they are gone from her phone. I've used exactly the same POP credentials with every iPhone released in the last four years and this is the first time we have experienced this behaviour.

Any other suggestions?

 

[chas_m]

The problem is that emails were in my wife's inbox on her phone, then they are gone from her phone.

This would happen if the email was checked (and downloaded) onto another computer, thus instructing the POP server to clear its copy.

 

[mrplow]

This would happen if the email was checked (and downloaded) onto another computer, thus instructing the POP server to clear its copy.

Agreed, if this is recent behavior, someone with access (knowingly or unknowingly) has changed the POP settings in their client.


For info: Even if you have you're own domain etc you can still forward to an IMAP service and reply back through the domain email. That's what I do all the time with my websites rather than using the supplied email.

 

[dbm]

This would happen if the email was checked (and downloaded) onto another computer, thus instructing the POP server to clear its copy.

That isn't my understanding. As soon as the message is downloaded to the phone it is, in effect, a copy of the server message and independent from it. I have emails on my iPhone right now which have been cleared from the server, but still show on my phone.

Agreed, if this is recent behavior, someone with access (knowingly or unknowingly) has changed the POP settings in their client.

For info: Even if you have you're own domain etc you can still forward to an IMAP service and reply back through the domain email. That's what I do all the time with my websites rather than using the supplied email.

I'll see about grabbing a screen by screen comparison of our settings and compare them again, but the format is different between the two devices hich makes the comparison more difficult.

 

[dbm]

Problem solved: the email account was set up as IMAP, not POP3. I don't know why it had been working ok until recently!

That explains the difference in the setting information between my phone and my wife's too!

 

[mrplow]

That'll do it.

Glad you found a solution