All Mail has vanished!

[banjon99]

I have changed mail providers and after receiving the new mail settings I proceeded to change the settings on my ipad 2. The mail account works with the new settings BUT all previous mail has vanished. Any suggestions/instructions in retrieving it greatly appreciated!!

 

[J. A.]

Hi, welcome to iPF!

Go to Settings - Mails, Contacts, Calendars and tap the account there. If there's a limit set up (like: Mail Days to Sync), then change it to "No Limit", if possible.
Sometimes the Mail app needs some time to receive all emails, when an new account is set up. What you could try is to scroll down as far as possible. Either you'll find something like "Download Mails from Server", or you'll notice that your account is trying to upload emails (top left, the rotating little circle on the screen). If this happens, give it a little time.

You could also try the usual fixes when something isn't working as it should:
Restart your iPad: turn it off, wait for a few minutes, turn it on again.
Reset it: press and hold Home and Power button until the Apple logo appears.
Force close apps:
iOS 6: double tap Home button to reveal multitask bar, then tap and hold one of the app icons until they start to wiggle, delete the apps.
iOS 7: same procedure to reveal multitask bar, then slide thumbnails above app icons towards the top of the screen.

 

[twerppoet]

If you are talking about the emails in the old account, then chances are they are still there, in that old account. Most accounts these days are IMAP or Exchange. These accounts store all your email on the sever. The iPad only stores the most recent emails on the device, and even then only up to a certain size.

Unless your old account has been deleted, just add it to the iPad again. You can have more than one email account on the iPad, and even move emails between them if they are both IMAP or Exchange. You'll need to start moving emails that you want to keep to folders in the new account. That would probably be easier to do from a computer.

In the case of a POP account, it's hard to say if your emails are recoverable. POP accounts only store emails on the sever until they are downloaded (usually).

If you don't know what kind of account you have, and can't find out on your providers' pages, the let us know who the provider is and maybe we can figure it out.

 

[banjon99]

Many thanks for your details emails, much appreciated. Things got complicated when our original service had a mail "crash" it was offline for 3+ days. In the meantime, not knowing how the ipad deals with mail, I changed the info on the old account and replaced it with the new account info. As soon as I checked the mail it brought all the mail from the new service, which was nil. Following this I could still not log onto my old mail. I contacted the original mail provider and they zipped and sent all the email to me which I can now sort thru. What a mess!! Anyway, once again thank you!! It's good to know there are actually people who can help!!

 

[twerppoet]

I'm glad you got it sorted. It's a pain when this kind of thing happens.

I highly recommend having your primary email account separate from your ISP (Internet Service Provider). ISPs as you've noticed, come and go, or you end up moving to a new one. A Google, iCloud, Yahoo, HotMail or other non-ISP account would let you keep your email indefinitely, as long as the chosen company doesn't go under anyway.