Some people have been experiencing an odd problem with the Mail app on the iPhone. They send an email and it disappears. It is not sent and is not delivered. Here is a possible fix for it.
You create a new email in the Mail app on the iPhone, it is addressed correctly, it has a subject and body, you tap the Send button and like magic, it disappears. You only realize this much later when the person you emailed contacts you and says that they never received the email they were expecting and they ask if you actually sent it.
How can emails just disappear into thin air? Where do the emails go to? Why are they not delivered? The answer to these questions is quite simple. Some people might say that it is a bug. Maybe, but it is certainly something that Apple overlooked at best.
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Remove Mail send delay
The problem is with the Undo Send Delay feature in Apple Mail on the iPhone.
Have you ever sent an email and then seconds after you tapped the Send button, you realize a mistake in the message or something you forgot? Maybe there is a typing slip or perhaps you forgot to attach a file to it.
We have all had a moment of panic like this and for this reason, Apple Mail lets you unsend an email you just sent. After tapping the Send button, you have a few seconds in which to change your mind and stop it from being delivered. This enables you to correct whatever is wrong with the email and then to send it again.
Brilliant, but… if you send an email and then quit the Mail app straight afterwards, the email does not send and it simply disappears. Why?
Open Settings on the iPhone and then press Mail. Swipe up the screen to get to the bottom of Mail settings and then press Undo Send Delay. This is the problem.
Either:
- Select Off to solve the problem of disappearing emails after sending in Mail.
Or
- Do not quit the Mail app until the email is actually sent and this Undo Send message at the bottom of the screen disappears. If you quit Mail before the the Undo Send time has elapsed, which can be up to 30 seconds, the email is not sent.
Basically, you are telling it to wait 10, 20 or 30 seconds before sending an email, then quitting Mail before the timer gets to zero and sends it.
Save a draft
I have found that if you write an email and then tap the Cancel button in the top left corner you have the option to save the email as a draft.
If you then send it and forget to keep Mail open until it is actually sent, it does not disappear, it remains in the Draft folder.
It is a bit of a hassle saving an email as a draft, going to the Drafts folder, opening it and then sending it, and you do have to check your Drafts folder regularly to check for unsent emails, but it does solve the problem. Maybe just use this technique if it is a long email that took time to write or is important.
Maybe Apple will fix this oversight in an iOS update.
Use another email app
You can always use another email app instead of Apple Mail. Huge numbers of people use Microsoft Outlook, Google GMail and Yahoo! Mail of course, but there are other great mail apps like Spark Mail, Bluemail and more. I have not tried delayed sending in those apps, so I don’t know what happens if you quit before an email is actually sent. Try sending a message and then quitting straight away to test them.
