Lost all my emails after ios 5 install.

[John L]

Me too. Absolute nightmare. How can this happen? Apparently my emails older than about 72 hours were all deleted from inbox, the entire sent folder gone, trash empty,

I have the same situation on iPhone also, I guess either because of the iOS update or the fact that I have enabled iCloud and maybe that has synced the issue to my other device. I really don't know the why, but am begging for a solution here.

Many of these deleted emails were only on my iPad and iPhone (like the thousands of sent emails) and it was all very, very, important to my business.

I have iPad 1, iPhone 4, pop email, windows 7 pc, ios5 on both devices now, and way too many issues to deal with now.

Is there ANY type of system restore available to revert all of this back to where I had my email?
Any setting? Any recovery? Any hope?

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE SOMEONE OFFER HELP HERE.

 

[kimtry]

my email issue seems to be that I cannot reply to any emails or send new ones without getting an error message that it is not able to send

iPad2 - iTunes updated to 10.5, upgrade to iOS5 and added iCloud
PC Windows 7 Home Preimum 64 bit OS

 

[John L]

I now have NO outlook calendar... Only the outlook icloud calendar listed in outlook now. Anyone know if I elect to remove the iCloud fiasco all together, am I now going to be screwed because they somehow deleted my original calendar locations?

 

[Forgetful]

I read this thread before upgrading to iOS 5 and backed up my email just in cased, but my emails were all preserved after upgrading. I have two POP3 accounts and several non-POP ones.

 

[misterfudd]

• Settings
• Mail
• Exchange
• Mail Days to Sync

Not the easiest to find, but there it is.

 

[Nospam]

Unfortunately, I don't have an Exchange set up, just the three POP3 accounts. All my other apps and data were restored in the upgrade - photos, Docs to Go, Books, etc. no problem. Mail obviously backed up and restored because the account settings, retrieval settings, passwords, contacts were all put back, just that all the messages, including the trash were wiped and then not restored. I presume they just aren't backed up when you back up the iPad, is that right? What's the method for backing up Mail message content, can it be done?

 

[russellclayton]

I also don't have exchange set up and all my mail was on MobileMe. If anyone has any further information or insight into how to retrieve old messages I'd be most grateful

 

[richsadams]

I also don't have exchange set up and all my mail was on MobileMe. If anyone has any further information or insight into how to retrieve old messages I'd be most grateful

I'm late to the party, but when I switched from MobileMe to iCloud all of my emails were intact. Did your MobileMe > iCloud transition appear to go smoothly?

 

[McPc]

Perhaps the part of restoring emails relies on having set up an iCloud account in the process of installing iOS5? I didn't see a need to set up an iCloud account and figured the normal backup/restore routine would include all data.

Obviously there was a glitch in the backup/restore routine which ignored the email data. However, I'm surprised that this issue isn't being mentioned anywhere else besides this thread.

Having read now that the restore process didn't recover email data the glitch was in the actual backup process. One major drawback of the iOS is not actually being able to see the data files in a file manager with the ability to do a manual back-up. I certainly have an uneasy feeling about just how secure my data is on my iPad after this incident when the backup isn't really reliable and lost my email data. Sure would like to see an official response and explanation.

 

[Forgetful]

I didn't set up a cloud account, and I don't use Mobile Me for email (though I have an account). My emails -- POP and gmail -- survived the update on iPad and iPhone.

I don't get how the cloud is needed to back up email. Isn't our email already in a cloud through gmail, etc.? I can open my gmail anywhere and see what I saved, without Apple getting involved.

 

[RPryor]

I'm late to the party, but when I switched from MobileMe to iCloud all of my emails were intact. Did your MobileMe > iCloud transition appear to go smoothly?

I installed iOS 5 on my iPad a couple of hours ago and lost all but my unread email.

I have a pop account with EarthLink for email and it is set to delete from the server when I download mail, so there is no EarthLink based backup. There was no warning that there might be any issue and no I did not activate an iCloud account. Some small protion of my historical email is on my desktop but I had a significant amount on my iPad that was never sent to the desktop (an iMac running 10.5).

I do have a TimeMachine backup that was made just before updating the iMac iTunes and installing iOS 5 on the iPad. Is there anyway to recover the lost emails from TimeMachine and if so how? I have never needed a backup from time machine so I am unfamiliar with the process. Any guidance would be appreciated.

BTW I have been an Apple customer since the first revision of the Apple II mother board and this issue is the first situation I have run into that raises serious concerns for both the present situation and any real trust in future upgrades. This was a big error from Apple and there were a significant number of important emails in those lost...

 

[McPc]

I didn't set up a cloud account, and I don't use Mobile Me for email (though I have an account). My emails -- POP and gmail -- survived the update on iPad and iPhone.

I don't get how the cloud is needed to back up email. Isn't our email already in a cloud through gmail, etc.? I can open my gmail anywhere and see what I saved, without Apple getting involved.

The way my pop account is set up I don't leave a copy on the server. Once it is picked up/delivered to one of my computers or devices it is only on my iPad or computer and deleted from the server. I can't log into a web based e-mail client and find it there such as you can with gmail or yahoo account.

The only way I figured the iCloud could come into play is if the iOS5 backup routine may have placed ALL data from the iPad into the Cloud and performed the backup from the Cloud. Somehow the backup to my iTunes folder on my computer did not include the email data from my iPad.

 

[Nospam]

Are you using the Mail app on the iPad or viewing your messages online? I still have my thousands of messages on the three online mail servers for the different accounts. It's the selected local messages and sent messages kept on the device that we're all erased.

As far as I can guess, the problem might be simply that an iPad backup does not backup email message content (so the erase, upgrade and restore routine only restored my email account settings not the messages). Reading other people's stories it looks like their messages were restored from different sync settings with remote servers not from the backup routine (e.g. they suddenly found a thousand unread messages in their inbox, but mine were all erased etc. depending how remote syncing was setup).

So what's going on? Mail is not listed in the apps list for a normal sync in iTunes, or listed on a separate tab like Photos, and I'm guessing it isn't included in a normal backup either, but instead only the Mail settings are backed up as part of General Settings? Why would Mail content not be backed up like any other app?

I'd really like to know the answer if only to work out what to do in the future. This has completely screwed up a lot of important work this week. If our IT department had been responsible for this upgrade someone's job would on the line. Is there any way to backup local mail from the iPad or should we just stop using the app and only use web mail?

 

[RPryor]

In my case I have been using the iPad mail app and as I said I lost everything, all email that had been read. The unopened mail was ok.

 

[McPc]

snip
So what's going on? Mail is not listed in the apps list for a normal sync in iTunes, or listed on a separate tab like Photos, and I'm guessing it isn't included in a normal backup either, but instead only the Mail settings are backed up as part of General Settings? Why would Mail content not be backed up like any other app?
snip

Aha! Well I did go back into iTunes and noticed there is indeed a Mail Sync in the INFO section of iTunes. The options on the Info page are to Sync Contacts, Calendar, Mail Other and Advanced. I didn't have the mail synced as I didn't need to include the 1000's of emails that I keep on my desktop on my 16GB iPad but I did have my contacts synced.

So perhaps therein lies the answer? We didn't do a sync with our email program so iTunes did not back up any of the existing email that was stored on the iPad.