iOS 13.1.2 - Email not being marked as read when I read it

Microsoft? Absolutely. They are usually the last to follow standards; see the thread on embedded images! But it could also be a misconfigured Exchange server or one that hasn’t been updated; a port that isn’t open on the server (or on your router if the problem only happens on Wi-Fi); there are many possibilities why you are experiencing this rare problem that doesn’t affect 99.9% of iPhone users.

But the problem could be with your cellular carrier, your ISP, or some of the settings on the phone. For example, do you have Push enabled for your mail? Cellular data enabled for Mail? Do you always have a solid Internet connection when viewing your mail? Are you connected to the company network through VPN? Is the VPN protocol up to date?

Have you tested using both cellular data and Wi-Fi? Does the problem appear on both? Does it appear all the time, or only sometimes? Do you have the problem with other mail accounts, or only the Exchange account?

Have you tried using the Outlook app on your phone rather than the built in email app?

Looks like today’s update to 13.2.3 addresses some issues with exchange accounts and the mail app. I hope it does, I’m installing now.

Not with me, still happening with 14.3. Only goes away when I restart

I believe this to be a Gmail problem on Google’s end of things. Both problems: missing mail and cannot mark Read involve Gmail tagging an email as Important (see the Important folder for those emails). It’s does appear to be fixed for now, but I thought so previously then the problem cropped up again.

I just did the iOS 13.2.3 update. I had 10 unopened emails and all of them cleared when I open them. Meaning, the blue dot disappeared immediately upon opening! Cautiously optimistic that this update fixed the bug.

in response to Mar_Denmark...

How could it have fixed yours for "a day or two" if the update was only released yesterday? Double-check that you're updated to 13.2.3. That's the update that seems to be focused on this issue.

It's so hard for Apple to fix this bug because, frankly, not as many people are having this issue as it seems. Just because the people in this post are experiencing it doesn't mean that everyone is. If everyone were experiencing it, it would actually be a whole lot easier to fix, because the problem could be easily reproduced and isolated. For example, I have been using the same Exchange account on my iPhone that everyone else in my office has and I have never, not once, experienced the issues described in this post. And I started running the iOS 13 beta back in July! Yet, there's quite clearly a legitimate issue here because there are enough people in my immediate vicinity that have experienced and demonstrated the issue to me. So, there's obviously some undiscovered variable that that affects their devices but not mine.

In the end, however, you have to put yourself in the shoes of an Apple Engineer: it's hard to fix something that's hard to reproduce. Perhaps you'd like to sacrifice your iPhone and personal data to allow an engineer to study this issue? Exactly. Not many people are willing offer up their devices and account access as a specimen for study. So, they have to try and reproduce this issue from scratch. It is frustrating for sure, particularly because the Mail app worked just fine in iOS 12. I expect that the Engineers are systematically combing through changes between iOS 12 and iOS 13's Mail app, targeting possible flaws, and crossing their fingers after each subsequent update.

The best we can do is just cross our fingers as well, or, better yet, continue to offer constructive troubleshooting tips that you've tried, such as resetting network settings for a temporary fix. You can also submit feedback at www.apple.com/feedback. (Yes, people do actually read every single message sent there. I had a friend who did that very job for a short time a few years ago.)

For me the “marked as read” issue still seems to have been resolved since updating to iOS 13.2.3.

The duplicate sent email thing still happens but it only seems to be when I’m replying to an email, not when I’ve sent a new fresh email.

The French person gave the almost correct answer. With the first mail hit Edit and then Cancel buttons. All the subsequent mails are marked read. BUT, it happens intermittently. I.E., every other time you log onto your mail you’ll get this problem. Each other time you log on you won’t. It’s one of the pieces of genius Apple has invented.

I’m stil seeing the problem in iOS 14.

It’s exacerbated by a very awkward normal process for marking emails as read - if there’s an email thread, you have to scroll through all the emails and select them in order to mark as read (when it’s working properly).

But often this still doesn’t work.

The only thing that marks emails as read is manually selecting the email and choosing “Mark as read.”

Whether this is a bug or a “feature” (ha), it’s super awkward and not a good design.

Me too. 13.2.3 seems to have fixed it so far.

After I received your previous post on this earlier, I advised my co-workers to try this. Interestingly, I did not have any duplicates in my own outlook account... and my mail has been working flawlessly. So, I'm waiting to hear back from the others in my office to see if they find duplicates there. Even if they don't, I'll advise that they remove the ActiveSync objects for their phones and re-add their emails. This is the most promising lead I've seen. So far as I can tell, this issue only affects outlook accounts for the people in my office.

I'll report back when I hear from others.

I’ve had the same issue with all iterations of iOS 13. Only with my Office 365 exchange account. Gmail and yahoo no issues. Tried the active sync and network setting reset to no avail. I’ll pay attention to the old vs new messages still downloading fully that those do generally seem to be the problem messages getting the status to change to read.

So, while the latest update to 13.2.3 seems to have fixed the "move message" and "mark as read" issues for me, a new issue has arisen instead. Now every email I send appears twice in my sent mail folder.

iOS 13.4.1 and iPadOS 13.4.1 and the problem is still here. Not just Gmail, happens for Exchange too. It’s just simply the entire iOS mail app itself. Updating to 13.5.1 now, fingers not crossed, doubt it will be any different. Been this way for years, but has been way worse with the latest versions of 13.