I ran into a strange issue recently when a friend brought their iPhone to me because they could not check for new mail on their iPhone. They had a Gmail account, and had not made any changes to that account (such as a password change or enabling 2-step verification for the account). When they tried to check their Gmail account’s email with the Mail app, they received the following error:
Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server ‘imap.gmail.com’ failed.
There are many online forums dealing with this issue, and after researching and testing the various solutions, I have discovered the most reliable one; to delete and then “re-add” the Gmail account to the iPhone or iPad.
Step 1 of 2: Delete the “broken” Gmail account:
- Launch the Settings app
- Touch “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
- Under the “ACCOUNTS” header, touch the Gmail account that is experiencing the problem.
- Scroll to the bottom and touch “Delete Account”
- Touch “Delete from My iPhone”
Step 2 of 2: “Re-add” the Gmail account
- Launch the Settings app
- Touch “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
- Under the “ACCOUNTS” header, touch “Add Account”
- Touch the “Google” logo
- Provide your Name, Email, Password, and a Description
- Touch “Next”
- Choose the services (Email, Calendar, Contacts, Notes) that you wish to synchronize
- Touch “Done”
At this point, your Gmail account will be able to check email without producing the “Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server ‘imap.gmail.com’ failed.” error.
I hope this information saves you some time if you are experiencing this issue. If not, please leave a comment and I will try to help!