gosh, this was one of the most incredibly frustrating issues I’ve ever had with my ipad, but (fingers crossed) I think I might have solved the problem, at least for me and hopefully yours. i use the ipad air email app to view multiple yahoo, gmail and outlook accounts and never had any problems until yesterday. Suddenly, on one of my yahoo accounts, I clicked on inbox and got the dreaded “unable to connect to server” error message. I could still see all the folders in the email account, but each folder said “no mail” in the left window and “no selected message” in the right window. To confuse things further, I discovered that I was able to send emails from that yahoo account, but could not receive them; also, reminders from that account were showing up in the ipad’s reminders app, so there was probably some communication between the ipad and the yahoo account.
spent over 5 hours on the phone and online with at&t/yahoo tech support last night. they were polite, but completely useless. they just mumbled the same typed replies over and over about using their pop server instead of imap, and finally told me there was nothing more they could do because they are not experts in “specialty” equipment and email clients. (Perhaps someone should inform them that iPads are quite popular these days.)
today i called apple ipad support number and spoke with kevin. what better attitude than the three at&t/yahoo drones i dealt with last night! Although Kevin couldn’t resolve the issue, he listened carefully, understood the extensive troubleshooting I had already done (which was all the steps he said he would have tried), and finally gave me a call to speak to a “super-escalation” person from tech support tomorrow to backup and restore my ipad (which is a somewhat harrowing and time consuming experience at best).
Since I thought I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on much else, I continued brainstorming and it seems I solved the problem. (Major points to Kevin and Apple, though, for not giving up on me, like at&t/yahoo had). if this fix stays stable today I’ll give the details to the “super escalation” person tomorrow so apple is aware hopefully that can save others the hours of frustration I faced solving this.
Common Solution: The usual solution to this problem is to remove the “offending” yahoo account from the ipad (settings -> mail, contacts, calendars) and then re-install the account on the ipad (settings -> mail , contacts, calendars -> add account). this didn’t work for me. as before, the folders appeared (after about 5 minutes) and the reminders worked, but I couldn’t see any emails and kept getting the “can’t connect to server” error message when trying to refresh the inbox or any folder .
second idea: when reinstalling the yahoo account (settings -> mail, contacts, calendars -> add account), instead of selecting “yahoo!” as account type, I selected “other”. (this doesn’t provide all the functionality of adding it as a yahoo account, but I thought it was worth a try). On the next screen, I entered the yahoo account credentials, clicked “next” (at which point the ipad verified the account information), and then clicked “save.” this “other” account then showed up in the ipad’s mail app. I could send and receive emails and see all the folders. I then noticed that some of the folders were downloading and displaying their contents, while others were not (they just stayed empty). that seemed very strange. i was wondering if there was something wrong with those particular folders (maybe a sync issue or database corruption) in my yahoo account, and if so, maybe those folder errors were preventing the ipad from downloading and displaying any email when the account was set up. on the ipad as a “yahoo!” account, but they did not prevent the ipad from downloading and displaying emails in unaffected folders when the account was set on the ipad as an “other” account.
Final idea (which seems to have worked): I went folder by folder in the ipad’s mail app (using the yahoo account I had set up as the “other” account) and noted which folders weren’t downloading or showing messages. the ipad on my desk, then i used the browser interface to access the yahoo account. renamed all “offending” folders (“[name] – old”), created new corresponding folders (“[name]”), and moved all emails from “[name] – old” to “[name] “. after migrating the email from each offending folder to the corresponding new folder, I restarted the ipad mail app and looked at the new folder in the ipad mail app (again, in the account set to “other” account). when I clicked on the name of the new folder (where I had moved the emails), the folder instantly refreshed and showed the emails. I continued this process until all emails were moved from the offending folders to the new corresponding folders. then i deleted all the “[name] – old” folders. So far, so good. I could now see all the emails in all the folders, but the account was not yet set to “yahoo!” account, so it was missing some functionality (such as reminders). so i just went back to settings -> mail, contacts, calendars -> add account, reconfigure yahoo email account on ipad as “yahoo!” account, I crossed my fingers, held my breath, and restarted the mail app on the ipad. the yahoo account was back with all the folders. when i clicked on each folder it immediately re-synchronized with the yahoo server and downloaded the contents of the folder. then i deleted the email account i had set as “other” account.
The bottom line: The takeaway from my past experience is that if any folder in a yahoo account has a glitch, the problem apparently prevents the ipad mail app from accessing any folder (including the inbox). ) when the account is set up. on the ipad as a “yahoo!” account, but it does not prevent the ipad mail app from accessing unaffected folders when the account is set on the ipad as “other” account. If this hypothesis is correct, I found two solutions: (1) set the account on the ipad to an “other” account (which at least gives you access to unaffected folders), or (2) move all emails from the folders. affected to new folders, delete the affected folders and reinstall the account on the ipad as “yahoo!” account.
I hope this solution works for you, and I hope it continues to work for me!