i keep getting strange emails dated 1970 that have no content and cannot be deleted, is this some form of virus

It's not a virus and other users have reported the same issue. I have no idea as to what causes it. Try either or both of these.

Reset the iPad by holding down on the sleep and home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple Logo appears - ignore the red slider - let go of the buttons.

Quit the mail app and restart. Go to the home screen first by tapping the home button. Quit/close open apps by double tapping the home button and the task bar will appear with all of you recent/open apps displayed at the bottom. Tap and hold down on any app icon until it begins to wiggle. Tap the minus ➖ sign in the upper left corner to close the apps. Restart the iPad. Restart the iPad by holding down on the sleep button until the red slider appears and then slide to shut off. To power up hold the sleep button until the Apple logo appears and let go of the button.

When do you get this, or see, these emails? Is it after doing a large number of email deletions? That happens when I delete a large number, there appear "empty" emails. Solution that works for me is to close Mail and then reopen Mail and Mail then fills in the emails with older mail that is did not display due to the limited number that are normally displayed.

This is not a virus but a way the Mial program fills in space after a large number of deletions.

Ralph .....

I have seen a number of people talk about this, but usually the emails are dated 1969 in the other posts that I've read about. From what I recall reading, it popped on the iPhone first, which certainly makes sense since that was the first iDevice on the market. I don't know that anyone has ever figured it out, but usually the fix is to perform the reset or quit the mail app completely.

The OP cannot delete the emails at all.

That has been my experience, also Demo...happens on my iPhone and iPad, but I have not paid attention to the dating. My experience has been that almost everytime I do a large amount of deleting, maybe need to note just how many or how many are left and see if there is a correlation, I get some "empty" emails appearing that I cannot delete. When that happens, I quit Mail, and then when I reopen Mail there is a full complement of emails present. Emails have been pulled in from those not being displayed due to the limit on number displayed that I am using.

My experience may not be the generic answer...it is the way this has been working for me, so whatever that is worth.

I haven't gone through the process you describe of reset, since the quit/restart has worked.

Obviously this is an "undcoumented feature" of Mail 😝

Do you know if anyone has filed a bug report with Apple on this? Seems like an appropriate thing to do under the circumstances.

Demo, couple more thoughts:

While this has annoyed me, it has not been enough of an annoyance to actually approach it systematically for resolution.

What needs to be done is - note the number of email deletions and the number remaining when this empty email phenomenon occurs. And the number of emails displayed that the user has set. See if it triggers on the number deleted, number retained, percentage of displayed that are deleted. And then change the display setting and get the same data for different display number settings. Try and figure out what the correlation is that triggers the empty email content.

Maybe someone that has too much time on their hands can volunteer to spend there days doing that task 🙂

Just some thoughts.

Ralph

I have never experienced the issue so I haven't really given all that much thought. I am pretty OCD about deleting emails when I am done reading them and consequently my inbox and trash folders are very neat and tidy. If and when I do see this, I will play around and see what I can come up with.

Thanks. I had just posted about this issue. Did the reset and it worked. In a way it is a relief to know that it more that likely is a software glitch rather than a virus.

Will report if it happens again. Hope Apple gets a fix soon!!!