Here is an iPhone Email Tip that will hopefully save you some frustration:
When reading your email with your iPhone, have you ever got the following message?
"This message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted. Ask the sender to send it again using a different format or email program. Multipart/Alternative"
If this happens to you, you can work around the problem by first deleting your message. Then go find the message in your trash and move the message back to your in-box. You should now be able to read the message properly.
Apparently this was an issue with iOS 3. It was fixed in iOS 4. Unfortunately the bug seems to be back again in iOS 5.
June 14, 2013 at 1:23 AM
This has happened to me so many times and I just deleted the emails. I just received a store receipt and really needed to see it. Thank you so much for having this very helpful information.
June 14, 2013 at 1:15 PM
Glad to hear that the tip helped you out Jeannie. Best regards, Michael
March 19, 2014 at 5:48 PM
It did not work.. The message “This message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted. Ask the sender to send it again using a different format or email program. multipart/alternative” did disappear and I was left with
” –_———-=_MCPart_1442483610–“…
Now what should I do? I’ve rebooted my iPhone, I’ve “cold” rebooted and it still happening….
Help?
July 13, 2014 at 11:30 AM
Did as instructions said – but when I sent to trash it disappeared, now what ?
December 8, 2014 at 10:15 PM
I tried the instruction that suggested moving it to the trash and then back to in box and does not work. This problem started after I started having trouble receiving or sending emails from my iPhone and it was suggested to delete email account on iPhone and then add email account using imap instead of pop3. So my question is. Is imap configuration causing this problem. Have the exact problem with my wife’s iPhone as well and also re-added the email account using imap.
December 17, 2014 at 3:47 PM
Thanks for the great question Rick.
IMAP messages actually stored on the server, not on your iPhone. If you don’t have a data plan, you won’t be able to see your messages when you are not connected over WiFi. If that is your case and you want your messages to always be available on your iPhone, use POP3 instead. You may not get new messages when you are away from WiFi but at least you won’t loose the ones you had received.
Bonus Tip
Keep in mind that POP3 may be configured to remove email from the server after it has been downloaded to your phone. If that is the case, you would no longer see messages using other methods such as web browser or email client. By configuring your phone to leave messages on the server, your messages will be available everywhere. If you have concerns about your phone getting filled up with email, just tell it to keep the most recent XX days of email. I have mine set to 90 days. If you are using an email client, you’ll need to tell it to do the same so that it doesn’t go removing emails before your phone gets a chance at downloading them.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Michael
February 3, 2015 at 11:22 PM
Delete the email from the device then re-add. It worked for me.
May 31, 2016 at 2:06 PM
Did not work for me. After I tried to move it to the inbox, it was nowhere to be found.
November 4, 2020 at 8:09 PM
It just happened after updating my iPad overnight on 11-3-2020. The message does not appear in any other mailbox including trash. Very frustrating. I sent it as a copy to myself using the same iPad. Makes no sense?
January 26, 2018 at 3:08 PM
Thanks so much for for the tip! I am going to have this email saved for myself for future. I am just so grateful for little tips like these!!!!
March 1, 2018 at 7:38 PM
For the first time ever, after updating to iOS 11.2.6 on iPhone 7. ALL my emails give me this notice. So are you saying I have to correct every single one of these emails to be able to read it? That’s crazy. Thank you for any suggestions.
March 4, 2018 at 11:30 PM
I deleted it, but it’s not in my trash. This was a message that I originally sent. Any ideas how to retrieve it? Thanks!
April 7, 2018 at 6:16 PM
Non of this works for me. Makes me want to get rid of my iPhone
November 2, 2018 at 10:03 AM
This did not work for me alas I have an iphone 6s. Not really much info online either.
October 12, 2020 at 11:11 AM
This just happened to me fir the first time. IOS 14.0.1. Message shows up on iPhone but not iPad. Also displayed on desktop with Windows 10 and Outlook.
October 21, 2020 at 9:40 AM
This is happening to me in ios 14. Your hint worked once I had found it.
November 17, 2020 at 3:59 PM
My ipad Pro started having this problem after the ios 14 updates. Your workaround took care of the problem- thanks!
June 26, 2021 at 7:43 PM
This same thing happened to me. And only on my iPad Air 3. IPad mini and iPhone 12 mini show all the email fine. I deleted/retrieved the email affected, updated iOS to 14.6 (from 14.2), turned it off and on (more than once), tinkered with Mail in Settings, checked iCloud to be certain the affected email was fine there (it was), and spent 90 minutes with Apple by phone. Ultimately it’s been escalated to Engineering. I should hear back in a few days.
Evidently this issue has been surfacing occasionally since iOS 3!
January 4, 2021 at 8:15 PM
Happens since update from 13.x to 14.2
My Mail is config to Bcc myself
Create new email
Send to friend
I get a copy in my inbox and it is in my sent box
In both places the content cannot be read
Replaced by the message cited above with a blank line then a line that says
text/plain
It appears to happen ONLY for emails that I create and ONLY if there is no attachment
If I attach a photo or even an Avatar the problem does not happen. Note that by including an image (photo or avatar) the message is no longer plain text. This seems to be key.
The problems does not always happen when I reply to a plain text message.
January 4, 2021 at 8:18 PM
ps. The Trash and move back to Inbox trick worked.
Thank you for that.
January 5, 2021 at 12:26 PM
PERFECT!SO GRATEFUL FOR YOUR WISDOM!
February 17, 2021 at 4:22 PM
Apple’s Mail app has been buggy for quite a while now, actually. One other bug is that it keeps automatically fetching e-mails even when it is set to “Manually” in Settings.
Anyway, I noticed this “message cannot be displayed” issue as well, basically only on e-mails that I send to myself from my iPhone or iPad. The bug is still present in iOS / iPad OS 14.4.
When you send an e-mail to yourself via the Mail app, you essentially end up with 2 copies of this e-mail. One arrives into your “Inbox” folder and the other copy stays in your “Sent” folder. The Mail app doesn’t seem to correctly switch between the two copies when tapping between them. This might be what is contributing to the randomness of the e-mail being “readable” or “bad”.
Anyway, here’s what I found out in my testing (it gets a bit complex):
After you send yourself an e-mail from the Mail app, whether the received e-mail is “readable” or “bad” depends on where you open it first.
1- If you tap on the e-mail in the Inbox folder first, it will be random (so it seems).
If it is “bad” in Inbox, the copy in Sent is also “bad”. If you delete the copy in Sent, the one in Inbox will become “readable”.
If it is “readable” in Inbox, the copy in Sent is also “readable”. If you delete the copy in Sent, the one in Inbox remains “readable”.
2- If you tap on the e-mail in the Sent folder first, it will always (so it seems) be “readable”. If you then tap on it in the Inbox folder, it will be “readable” there as well.
If you delete it from Inbox, the copy in Sent will become “bad”.
If you delete it from Sent, the copy in Inbox will remain “readable”.
So basically the bottom line is this:
If you send an e-mail to yourself and it ends up showing “message cannot be displayed” when you open it in Inbox, go to the Sent folder and delete the copy in there. That should make the one in Inbox readable.
March 17, 2021 at 5:15 PM
This happen to me on an email I created and bcc myself through a forwarded Acct. Delete and restore worked. Ios14 on iPhone XR MARCH 2021!
March 23, 2021 at 10:37 PM
“This message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted. Ask the sender to send it again using a different format or email program.
I have had this same problem for over a year.
I would have hoped Apple would have put more effort into fixing bugs than providing new features!
Everytime I upgrade the IOS I look forward to the problem being solved, but obviously their level of expertise is not high enough!
April 13, 2021 at 5:53 PM
Often happens to email I wrote and is now in my “Sent” folder. The text is completely readable in the list. I tried moving it to Trash and when it is in there it does not give the error message. When I move it back to “sent” I get the same old error message .
This started with iOS 14 on my iPad 6th generation. Never happened before iOS 14. Too bad Apple has let this go on so long.
May 7, 2021 at 10:24 AM
I am now on iOS 14.5. Why is this still a thing? Grrrr.
May 7, 2021 at 10:12 PM
It worked! Thank you!!!
June 8, 2021 at 1:48 PM
Does anyone at Apple care about this? I don’t see them replying to this obvious and recurring issue. I’m fed up with this problem and shouldn’t need a workaround. Hey Apple… EARN your money and fix this friggin’ thing!!!
June 15, 2021 at 11:50 AM
Moved from Sent to trash to inbox and it worked! Thanks!
June 26, 2021 at 6:49 PM
When it happens to me and I move to trash it’s gone forever. No getting it back. iPhone has become the biggest joke in phones. Time to move on.
July 27, 2021 at 3:21 PM
This happens to me on iPhone 12 and iPad Pro, both with iOS 14.7. The soluttion helps to me on iPhone. Thanks for the tip.
August 14, 2021 at 7:57 PM
I can’t believe this problem has been going on since 2012 and Apple hasn’t fixed it. The same email that won’t display on my iPhone displays just fine on my husbands Samsung
FIX THE BUG APPLE. IT’S BEEN 9 years!!!
September 28, 2021 at 6:01 AM
Great workaround!
I just have to do this on every email I send, as I bcc myself but the message in the inbox and sent items is already readable.
Still occurs on iPhone SE (2016) running iOS 14.8
February 4, 2022 at 5:47 PM
I have been searching for an answer for months. Thank you. Perfect.
March 5, 2022 at 6:30 PM
This is still happening with messages bcc’ed to myself on an iPhone 11, IOS 15.3.1 in 2022!!!
April 1, 2022 at 6:38 PM
I would love to delete and get it back from trash, but where is trash on ipad pro
May 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM
This has just happened to me for the first time. Now I can’t read any of my e-mails and nothing suggested seems to work
December 24, 2022 at 7:51 PM
It doesn’t happen to me consistently. When it happens, the delete trick as above does work … sometimes. I agree: APPLE —. FIX IT!