iPhone Mail Issue

[MTech1135]

I use my iPhone for POP mail and I have recently moved to a new mail host.

My old setup was:
POP incoming: mail.mydomain.com
SMTP: mail.mydomain.com
[email protected]

When I viewed my inbox on my iPhone I had all of my old emails available to me to search and browse. Yesterday I moved to a new mail server. So I updated my mail account on my iPhone with the new information:

POP Incoming: mail.newprovider.com
SMTP: mail.newprovider.com
[email protected]

However, after this update, all of a sudden all of my emails in my inbox on my iPhone have disappeared. I have no idea where they went. All I did was change my account password, POP server and SMTP server. Nothing else was changed, I did not delete the mails off my phone or anything.

Does anyone know what could have caused all of my old emails to disappear from my iPhone inbox?

 

[ardchoille]

When you switch back to the old mail provider, do your messages reappear?

 

[MTech1135]

Unfortunately that really isn't easily done. The DNS records for my domain would have to be changed and pointed to the old server, which would cause a propagation window.

I'm assuming what you are getting at is: If the server has mail, iPhone displays the mail available on the server. In other words, considering my old server had all my old mail, it was visible in my iPhone inbox. However, since switching, the new server no longer has my old mail (fresh server -- did not import old mail), the iPhone inbox sees the new server is "empty", therefore it displays an empty inbox.

Does the above make sense?

Sorry, I do not know how iPhone handles the inbox contents, but if the above is true, is it possible to change how the inbox displays mail contents? Ie; instead of using the server to chose what mail to display, could it display all locally downloaded mails regardless of server contents?

 

[ardchoille]

Unfortunately that really isn't easily done. The DNS records for my domain would have to be changed and pointed to the old server, which would cause a propagation window.

I'm assuming what you are getting at is: If the server has mail, iPhone displays the mail available on the server. In other words, considering my old server had all my old mail, it was visible in my iPhone inbox. However, since switching, the new server no longer has my old mail (fresh server -- did not import old mail), the iPhone inbox sees the new server is "empty", therefore it displays an empty inbox.

Does the above make sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense. When you changed server settings, the list of messages also changed because the list of messages isn't identical on both servers. Is there someone who can help you forward all of the messages from the old server to the new? Barring that, do you have access to a web interface for the old server where you can forward the messages? Web hosts often have at least one web UI (often Squirrel Mail) for interacting with the mail server.

 

[MTech1135]

I have full access and control to both servers, however, migrating all old messages would be an extremely cumbersome task. I was hoping if this was the cause of the problem that I could somehow utilize the local storage of the messages (assuming they are locally stored).

I'm not very experienced when it comes to iPhone, so I have a few questions for you:

1. Does iPhone locally store all old messages? Ie; are my old emails stored in my phone, just simply not visible due to the settings change?
2. If the above is true, is it possible to make the old locally stored messages visible in my new inbox?

 

[ardchoille]

Just had a thought. Does the old server still exist? If so, you should be able to add both servers in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > in the Accounts section at the top of the screen. (the "Add Account" button). This would let you interact with the messages on both servers while in the "All Inboxes" view in the Mail app.

 

[MTech1135]

Yes the old server is still online and active, however, it is only going to be online for the next few days, after which it will be shut off permanently. Also, the DNS for my domain is no longer pointed at the old server, so it would require me to update the DNS Zones for mail.* which would recent my existing (live) email unreachable, which I can't really afford.

I was really hoping that the iPhone was storing my old emails locally and it is simply just a misconfiguration on my part that is causing them to not appear in the newly configured inbox.

 

[ardchoille]

Yes the old server is still online and active, however, it is only going to be online for the next few days, after which it will be shut off permanently. Also, the DNS for my domain is no longer pointed at the old server, so it would require me to update the DNS Zones for mail.* which would recent my existing (live) email unreachable, which I can't really afford.

I was really hoping that the iPhone was storing my old emails locally and it is simply just a misconfiguration on my part that is causing them to not appear in the newly configured inbox.

Well, I'm still a bit new to how iOS works, but have been running servers for years. It could very well be that a simple setting will yield what you want, so let's hope someone else can chime in with some valuable information.

 

[MTech1135]

I understand. Thank you very much for your help so far. Yes I am actually in the same boat. If you hand me a Linux server, I can do anything and everything. However, iOS is very new to me.

 

[ardchoille]

I understand. Thank you very much for your help so far. Yes I am actually in the same boat. If you hand me a Linux server, I can do anything and everything. However, iOS is very new to me.

It is indeed a small world! I jumped from Window 98 SE to Linux in 2001 and have been using nothing but Linux distros since then. In June of last year I jumped to OS X full-time. Looks like we're in the same boat

iOS and OS X are based on BSD. So, if you jump over to OS X your learning curve will be minuscule - you can imagine my joy when this happened to me.

 

[MTech1135]

Ha! Couldn't have said it better myself -- it is indeed a small world.

Thanks for the details about OS X, considering what you have stated, it may be worth my time to familiarize myself with it so I can become more well rounded Thanks again!

 

[J. A.]

Unlike IMAP, POP doesn't save emails on a server but on the device, in this case your iPhone.

 

[MTech1135]

Hey J.A. thanks for the reply.

Well, as I explained in my first post, I didn't do anything to delete the emails from the phone. I simply changed the incoming and outgoing servers. Why would the emails entirely disappear from the inbox? Do you have any idea what might have happened?

 

[J. A.]

I suppose by changing incoming and outgoing server, there's no connection to the original account any more, and that's the reason why they disappeared.

Maybe there's an option to export all the emails at once to another account.

 

[MTech1135]

J. A, yes I suspect that would be the issue, however I am not sure how to restore the old emails (via an export/import etc). My knowledge of the iPhone interface is very limited. I was hoping one of you savvy individuals would be able to assist with a solution for this.

Thanks,