I recently had a problem with my email no longer downloading on my Android Gmail app. Interestingly, only one of my two accounts stopped downloading email, while the other one was working. It was a very annoying problem, and after spending considerable time fiddling with the settings and searching the internet, I found the rather simple solution below. This post is for those who may be having the same issue.
I spent half an hour looking all over the internet, and it seemed that were plenty of non-answers such as use the generic email app on Android instead and wait for a fix, or even access Gmail via the browser and create a bookmark shortcut on the Android launcher.
The one potentially valuable answer was: clear the Gmail app cache, which unfortunately did not work for me. It is worth trying this out first though (go to settings > Applications Manager > Gmail. Then click on ‘Clear cache’ in the bottom right). If this doesn’t work then read on.
What did work for me: uninstalling the Gmail app, or at least uninstalling all updates to it (you cannot uninstall the app, but you can revert it to the factory default.) Worked beautifully.
To uninstall go to settings > Applications Manager > Gmail. Then click on ‘uninstall updates’. It should display the message displayed below ‘all updates to this Android system app will be uninstalled’. Click ‘OK’
Two things to note;
1. this will not erase your account settings, but it will erase your emails off the device (which is no biggie since the app will re-download them).
2. In my experience, and once the accounts were downloading email again, I let the app update and – lo – it still worked. My concern over whether letting the app update would get me back to the same situation that I started with were unfounded.
Hope this helps.
