This may explain the problem, but I believe it is a flaw in the system - a serious flaw if you are a business user. The phone appears to download headers only, and then download the message when you check it, but the phone does not store the messages is downloads - it only stores the headers - so that when your desktop Outlook downloads and removes the message from the server, what you thought was on the phone is not. This does not occur with blackberrys, which store and save all emails downloaded. From my observation, it also does not seem to work 100% that way - some messages seem to be retrievable on my iphone after outlook has downloaded, but others come up with the error message - this suggests a glitch.

As a business user, this is a very serious flaw, and despite its many other positive features I would switch to blackberry.

Hey Dan, thanks for the interesting comment. You are right that the iPhone only downloads the headers but once you read a message, the body is stored on the phone. I can verify this since I’m still able to read some messages from a few days ago that are definitely not on the server any longer. This is just a guess on my part, but I think that the iPhone may possibly download the entire message in some cases where it is really small. Likewise it may not keep the message stored locally if it’s really huge. This would account for the seemingly random behavior. Like many things Apple, they don’t really tell us what magic is happening behind the curtain. (These are not the droids you are looking for)

I did have a blackberry for about 1 year. I personally developed a deep and intense hatred of that phone for various reasons, but I will have to agree with you that the email functionality is very slick. My complaint was that everything else about it sucked! Mind you this was 2 years ago and the newer blackberrys look a lot cooler. Now that I figured out the Outlook configuration, I would say that the iPhone email works just as well for my needs. My only gripe is that there is no “mark all as read” feature which is highly annoying.

I’ve only had my iPhone for about 5 days, but I’ll keep posting as I learn more about it.

This is a VERY annoying “feature” of the iPhone and it is indded erreatic at best. I often receive e-mail messages that remain on the server (POP3) but I cnnot access them via the iPhone. After much investigation there appears to be no rhyme or reason!

Hmm, it seems some people are experiencing the problem even when the message is still on the server? I haven’t had the error since changing my Outlook settings, but it’s still only been a few days.

I think that there is a more serius problem. i create a completely new gmail email acount to view mail in my iphone. then, in my MAIN gmail acount (that is configured to be accesed by outlook) i create a forward setting (in gmail config page), so, all the mail that i recive in the main mail acount is recived also in the iphone mail acount. in 10 messages with atachments, http designs and other stuff, 2 of them have the “This message has not been downloaded from the server”. I think that the iphone mail app is very bad.

Has any one had a problem with the iPhone dowloading your email and then it not downloading in outlook? I have looked and there are no settings on the phone to leave a copy on the server like in outlook. This only happens with some mesages, some i get on the phone and outlook, some I dont. Any Ideas?