Forum Discussion

Flowerpower11's avatar
Flowerpower11
Joining in
8 months ago

Iphone no longer displays contents of Mailbox

My email address ends in virginmedia.com. I have successfully used this email address for years without any problems on my iphone. A few days ago my iphone stopped showing new emails in the inbox with an error message “imap.virginmedia.com” is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in mail settings. So I checked this and ensured that the email address is correct and re-keyed the encrypted password in just in case. ( Even though I did not change any mail settings in the first place for this to happen). The mail settings on my phone are as follows:

Incoming Mail Server = imap.virginmedia.com, username = my email address and my encrypted password

Advanced, Incoming Setting = Use SSL is set to “On”,  Authentication is set to “Password”, Imap Path Prefix is set to “/“, Server port is set to “993”,

S/MME is set to “No”, Encrypt to Default is set to “No”

Outgoing Mail Server is set to smtp.virginmedia.com (primary) which is set to “On” + shows my email address and encrypted password, use SSL is set to “On”, Authentication is set to “Password”, Server Port is set to 587, OtherSmpt Servers “smtp.ntlworld.com” is set to “Off”.

I can view the contents of my mail box on my iPad - this also shows new received mails and lets me send and receive mail between mail boxes - so there are no connection issues to my mail box on iPad.

My iphone is updated to the latest software iOS 17.5.1 and has sufficient free storage capacity to receive emails. I have good internet connection but tried to use mobile data but still get same error message. I also shut my phone down completely to reboot software - still same error message. I deleted my email account and then tried to re-add it with the result that I now even can’t see any of the previous mail content on the mail box, on the general mail box page it shows me 28 unread items as a total number against the mail box, but still shows same error message and won’t let me view contents. I honestly don’t know what else I can try to rectify the problem. Have you got any suggestions please? Please let me know.

Thank you

  • Hello Flowerpower11,

    Welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post here on the forums. I’m sorry to hear of the issues that you’re having with your email account at the moment. 

    Are you able to login to your email account via our webmail service? This can help us to determine were the issues lie.

    What email application, are you using to view emails on your iPhone? Are you able to check for issues on any other devices? 

    Kind Regards,

    Steven_L

  • Hi Steven,

    many thanks for your response. Please accept my apologies for my late response. I have only just been able to check my emails on my iPad and noticed you sent me a reply notification.

     I am a Virgin Media Customer and so I logged into my account on PC. I don’t normally access emails via my account so I have added it to try and view the contents. The result is that the mailbox and its contents are displayed without any problems. For your information - I also use another mailbox and this ends in @ntlworld.com. Again I have no problems accessing this mailbox on my PC via my Virginmedia Account. I can also view both mailboxes on my iPad. 
    Up until several days ago my iPhone displayed both mailboxes without any issues. Now I can still view the up to date ntlworld.com mailbox contents but when I try to view my virginmedia.com mailbox I keep getting the same error message as before and can’t view contents. Even though it looks as though my phone tried to connect to your server and at that point there must have been 28 new items in the inbox (but it wouldn’t download them or any of the previous contents from before). From my iPhone  I have sent a test email from ntlworld.com mailbox to my virginmedia.com mailbox and I can successfully view this new email in my virginmedia.com mailbox on my PC. 
    I use an iPhone SE and use the mail app which comes with the phone.

    I really appreciate your time in looking into what could be the cause of my issue and look forward to your response in due course.

    Thank you and kind regards

    • Tom_W1's avatar
      Tom_W1
      Forum Team

      Hi Flowerpower11 thanks for your reply, it does sound like you may need to set up your phone's mailbox again by creating a new password - please follow these steps:

      We've recently updated our email policy and there are a few steps you can follow which will automatically unlock the email address.

      Please log in to My Virgin Media here  > Click on Account settings > Virgin Media Mail settings > scroll down to the App password section and click the Generate new App password button.

      You should get a pop up message asking you to verify your email address and you'll need to use a 3rd party email address to continue. You'll be sent a one time passcode to enter on the next page to verify it's you. Once verified you'll then be given an app password which will look something similar to: mail-horse-yellow-panda and you should note this down.

      To get things working on an email client or app again, you will need to enter the new mail password in the settings. This will allow your emails to load again. In some cases, you may need to remove the email account from the mail client or app completely and re-set it up as fresh. If this is the case for you, please ensure you use your VM email address as the username and the newly generated app password.

      These changes have been put in place as Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now required. Just as a side note, when logging in to My VM, you will need to use the third party email address as the username and your original My VM password.

      Give that a try and let us know how you get on.

      • Flowerpower11's avatar
        Flowerpower11
        Joining in

        Hi there Tom & Team,

        many thanks for your latest response. Unfortunately your advice doesn’t work with my account settings on my VM account. I logged into my VM account and went into Account Settings > VM Mail Settings > Manage your VM Mail App Password. Unfortunately only my @ntlworld.com email address is shown there and the field cannot be edited from my end for me to type in my virginmedia.com email address - so I cannot generate a new password for it.
        I went into my Account details and my @virginmedia.com email address is shown under  manage other My VM accounts as an additional account. But other than deleting this account (which I don’t want to do as I want to keep both email addresses going) and creating new account the page doesn’t allow me to do anything else. So not sure what I can do from my end to rectify the issue. Please advise further.

        Thank you & kind regards