On rare occasions, iPhone and iPad users may encounter a “cannot receive mail” error message in the ios mail app, indicating that ios mail is unable to retrieve new emails or some other problem with the configured mail account. the full error message appears as a pop-up window and usually says something like “cannot receive mail: connection to server failed”. and is sometimes accompanied by an “enter email account password” message, along with a small “account error” statement at the bottom of the ios mail app. these errors are understandably annoying as they prevent email from working as expected.
if you see the error “cannot receive mail” in the mail app for iphone or ipad, this tutorial will try to resolve that error message so that you can send and receive emails as usual again in the ios mail app .
fixing “cannot receive mail” errors on iphone and ipad
Here are some easy troubleshooting steps to resolve “Cannot Receive Mail” error messages in the iPhone or iPad Mail app.
1: Confirm an active internet connection, wait and try again later
The first thing you should do is make sure you have an active internet connection by checking your wi-fi and/or cellular connection. this is particularly true if the error message is “cannot receive mail – connection to server failed” as a simple and temporary internet connection problem is often more likely to blame (in fact, it may replicate the error message at any time by disabling internet connectivity and then try to get your email in the mail app, not surprisingly it fails).
then check if your internet connection is working. This is easily done when trying to access various websites or applications that use the internet on your iPhone or iPad. If apps other than the mail app work fine with the internet, that’s a good indicator that the problem is related to the mail app only, and maybe it’s a server issue or an authentication issue.
either way, the next thing to do is nothing, just wait a while and try again later.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but there is a good reason for this approach; Often times, the “cannot receive mail” error appears simply due to a temporary failure in connectivity to the internet or to the mail server. simply waiting a while often resolves the mail issue completely, especially if the error was related to a remote mail server issue or the mail server is down.
2: re-authenticate with the mail server
Next, you need to confirm that your authentication credentials work with the mail server. this is particularly true if you see the error message “cannot receive mail” along with the message “please enter password for (email account)” on the screen.
if you see the “enter password” screen within the mail app (or sometimes even on the ios home screen), tap the “edit settings” button and confirm that your username and password are correct with the mail server in question.
On rare occasions, mail servers and email providers may have outages that affect user authentication and login, or after an outage, some email services may require you to re-authenticate with them. Recently, many users experienced this error with Outlook and Hotmail email accounts, where some mail servers were down and thus preventing the user account from connecting to the email accounts. waiting a while worked to resolve this for most people, but for some users (myself included) it was necessary to enter the account password to log in again via ios mail to resolve the persistent error message “no mail can be received.”
If you see “cannot receive mail” errors along with “enter password” error popups on your ios device like this, tap “settings” and re-authenticate:
In this example screenshot, re-authenticating with outlook sufficiently resolved the “cannot receive mail” and “enter your password” error messages, and email started working as expected again:
3: confirm mail settings in ios
This is a variation of the trick above, but essentially you’ll want to confirm that the mail settings are configured as expected.
- open the “settings” app and go to “accounts & passwords” *
- touch the email account that shows the “cannot receive mail” error messages
- login and authenticate with the mail account if necessary
There’s often a shortcut available for this if you tap the “details” button at the bottom of the mail app if that little status bar shows an error.
if there was a temporary problem with the email server, often this simple process will resolve any mail problem on ios.
* Somewhat counterintuitively, you don’t want to go to the “mail” settings section, even though you’re changing the mail account settings. instead, because mail settings are defined by an account and password, go to the accounts and passwords section of the settings app in ios.
4: check for real problems with the email server
While rare, email servers sometimes have downtime for maintenance reasons, crashes, security issues, someone tripped over a cable somewhere, or any number of other reasons. therefore, it might be a good idea to check if the email server is actually down.
For large email providers like gmail, outlook, yahoo, hotmail and the like, you can often simply go to those websites directly from a web browser or search the news to see if there is a significant outage. if there is, wait until the outage is resolved before trying to access the mail server.
for smaller email providers, such as an internet service provider, corporate network, business email, or smaller email providers, you may need to contact the person who manages the email service directly or the email server (such as your office IT staff). ) to confirm that the mail server is working as expected.
5: restart the iphone or ipad
Properly rebooting an iPhone or iPad will often fix erroneous problems that are otherwise inexplicable to diagnose or fix. While rebooting a device is annoying, it’s quick and easy, making it a worthwhile troubleshooting step, regardless of your thoughts on the matter.
Simply turning off the device using the ios software’s shutdown function and then turning the device back on often works, or you can also force a device to reboot. different devices have different force reboot methods:
- how to force restart iphone and ipad with a clickable home button
- how to force restart iphone x
- how to force restart restart iphone xs max, iphone xr, iphone xs
- how to force restart iphone 8 and iphone 8 plus
- how to force restart iphone 7 and iphone 7 plus
6: remove & re-add the email account in ios
If you are sure that your internet connection is working properly, that the mail server is not down, and that there are no problems with the internet connection, the mail server, or your login and authentication credentials, you can remove and re-add the mail account to the iphone or ipad.
removing and re-adding an email account on ios can have some unwanted side effects, because many email providers also sync contacts and notes and other features through the email account, occasionally with things like loss of notes or contacts or archived emails . Therefore, you will want to have a full backup of your iOS device to iCloud or iTunes or both before going this route so as not to lose any data.
- first backup your iphone or ipad to icloud or itunes or both
- delete ios mail account by going to settings > beads & password > choosing the email account, then choosing “delete account”
- reboot the iphone or ipad
- now add the email account to ios again by going back to settings > beads & password > and selecting “add account”
While the process of backing up, deleting an email account, restarting, and re-adding that email account can be annoying, it’s also very effective when all else fails to fix a problem with the mail application for ios.
did these tricks work to resolve “cannot receive mail” error message on iphone or ipad when trying to check email? Do you have another solution that worked for you? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below!