Mail screwed after 10.2.1 update

[fredfrog]

iPad 4, iPhone 5, update to iOS 10.2.1 first listed Inbox in mail greyed out.

I use a number of email accounts. After updating to 10.2.1 the Inbox of the first listed email account in iOS apple mail is greyed out. I can access other folders in that account and it still updates (IMAP) but I can't open the inbox folder and see its contents. Identical behaviour on both my iPhone 5 AND my iPad 4. Tried deleting that account and setting it up again but that doesn't fix the issue.

Most of my accounts are on the same server and settings are the same apart from ID and password. The other accounts are all working fine as usual and this account works fine with thunderbird on my macbook. Nothing else was changed. Looks to me like a bug in 10.2.1. Its the first-displayed account in the mail app but not in the settings.

Right now I don't have access at all to my main email account using iOS (which is painful as there are places I don't take my laptop). I'm aware that 10.2 is still signed (at Jan 29th) but I didn't back-up before upgrade so its not easy to roll-back. I haven't found any mention of this particular problem anywhere else. Is anyone else suffering or know of reports ?

If my only option is to wait for a fix from Apple in 10.2.2 or 10.3 can anyone recommend a nice simple app that runs on iOS to access this account while I'm waiting - I don't want any fancy things like "tell me about this mail later not now" or anything I have to learn to use, just plain simple imap. I don't care about threads, just content.

<Random debugging thoughts> - maybe when I deleted the account and re-entered it in an attempt to fix the issue I should have changed its name - it feels exactly like it picked up the settings that were there before I deleted it - maybe deleting leaves some properties. If this were on a device on which I had root access I'd look at the permissions on the directory because it has the flavour of wrong permissions - everything seems to work except it won't let me look into the Inbox.</>

andy

 

[fredfrog]

To keep me going on my iphone at least until its fixed, for now I have downloaded spark. It will do. Not what I want but it works fine and demonstrates the problem is definitely Apple's. Not come across any other reports of this problem - maybe its confined to older devices (iphone 5, ipad 4) and maybe everyone would would be able to report on it has at least a 6 ? . If you know of reports of this please mention them here so I know I'm not inventing it. -andy

 

[BrianBaughn]

To clarify: the troublesome accounts are all hosted by the same service? If so, do you mind mentioning the service name?

 

[fredfrog]

To clarify: the troublesome accounts are all hosted by the same service? If so, do you mind mentioning the service name?

LUXSCI (a thoroughly good service, I recommend them)

 

[ekangas]

We have not seen any particular issue with the iOS from other customers, however:

1. If you have another "INBOX" folder under your "mail" directory and your mail path is "mail" (as is recommended at LuxSci), then iOS sees 2 INBOXes and it can grey them out. If this is the case, LuxSci support can check and help you rename the 2nd INBOX to resolve the problem.

2. If you are using IMAP (as you indicate), you could consider switching to LuxSci's MobileSync service to send/receive email. This is an Exchange ActiveSync connection and your experience may be different. LuxSci could let you try that out free for a month to see if it helps.

-Erik Kangas
LuxSci.com

 

[fredfrog]

We have not seen any particular issue with the iOS from other customers, however:

1. If you have another "INBOX" folder under your "mail" directory and your mail path is "mail" (as is recommended at LuxSci), then iOS sees 2 INBOXes and it can grey them out. If this is the case, LuxSci support can check and help you rename the 2nd INBOX to resolve the problem.

2. If you are using IMAP (as you indicate), you could consider switching to LuxSci's MobileSync service to send/receive email. This is an Exchange ActiveSync connection and your experience may be different. LuxSci could let you try that out free for a month to see if it helps.

-Erik Kangas
LuxSci.com

Thank you Erik. Nope - no extra INBOX'es that I can see (looked in Manage Folders - it would appear there, yes?). My path is mail as it should be. My best guess is that its something specific to older devices (iPhone5, iPad4) that occured during the update (it could well be a directory permissions/ownership issue though I appreciate there are many possible causes - wish I had root access on iOS). I wonder how many of those with the technical "nous" to be able to report this are still using old hardware - this is the only explanation I can think of for not finding others experiencing it.

Thanks for the suggestion but I'd prefer to keep the account as it is as in all other respects it works great for me - this problem is just a minor nuisance, not business-critical. For the time being I'm using spark on iOS to access that account - which I'm not keen on, its a great app but I'm led to believe it stores my details for some operations in a "man in the middle" fashion as it has its own push etc. for new mails and notifications of. My use of mail on iOS is not heavyweight - anything heavy I wait until I'm in front of the laptop. If I were really desperate to use that account in iOS mail I could set up a filter to another folder and use that folder - its only the Inbox that is greyed, other folders are fine.

For anyone else reading, I am thoroughly pleased with LUXSCI which I've used for about a year now. Solid, extremely flexible with aliases/redirections and server side filtering and all sorts of nice things, very reasonable charges and you can see the quality of support in this conversation - excellent.

Thanks again Erik

andy

 

[fredfrog]

I have solved the problem. At the same time I seem to have exposed some crummy behaviour from iOS. Erik from LUXSCI - is there somewhere I should document this on LUXSCI for others ? Please by all means copy it and paste it somewhere there. If its at all related to the problem you mentioned then its only a very loose arrangement.

Here's the process I went through:

1. checked for hidden additionalINBOXes in LUXSCI space. There wasn't one, but there *were* a couple of extra folders created by spark. I got rid of those just in case they were a problem (and since then have dumped the spark app too). I don't think they were the problem but I *do* think the order of setting the namespace for imap was one factor in the solution.

2. I set up another LUXSCI user ID/email to test stuff with. On an iOS device I deleted the problem account and set up a new account to run with the LUSCSI test ID. I was extremely careful about the order of doing stuff. I made sure the apple mail app wasn't running while changing settings. I also set the imap namespace to mail as required for LUXSCI *and* set the folders (draft, sent etc.) to live on the iOS device - both of these *before* running the mail app. *Then* (and only then) did I run the mail app. Everything worked fine for the test account. *Then* I visited the folder settings on iOS (drafts, sent etc.) and set them to point to the LUXSCI folders not the local ones on the device. All fine.

3. I repeated this for the problem account. In doing so I discovered some interesting differences in the way the new test one and the problem one behaved with the settings. When I set up the problem account on iOS again it was clearly picking up some previous settings even though it *should* behave like a new account. For example it set the smtp port to 6465 without my setting it (for the test account I had to do it manually) and when I returned to set the folders to ones on the server they had already been set there. How ??? I don't know.

4. Finally I deleted the test account I had set up on iOS and the spark app (because I don't want an app that creates its own folders on the server and hangs on to ID's) and changed my password because spark was given the old one.

What a complete rigmarole.

Job offers for heterogenous system debugger (person) welcome (there is logic in the order of stuff in the process above).

What emerges from this:

1. don't trust updates - unless you know they are security updates and exploits are about to be released hang on a few days before doing them. They can be more work than they are worth

2. It REALLY REALLY matters, at least with this server and iOS, that when setting up an account you set the imap namespace *before* running the client - iOS mail settings are not (imho) very robust at updates and when setting up.

andy