Phantom unread emails: Mail shows 5 unread messages, but there are none...

Question

Level 2

251 points

Phantom unread emails: Mail shows 5 unread messages, but there are none...

I've got four email accounts set up with my iPhone 4 (updated to latest software). Yesterday, however, one of those inboxes started showing that there was one unread email on the account (an imap account), but when I go to view the message list there are no unread emails there. And this morning, it started showing five unread messages, but again no unread messages were there.

The 'unread messages' don't show up in Mail on my iMac either (and the Mail icon in the doc does not show any phantom 'unread' messages).

Has anyone else encountered this problem, and if so, how was it solved?

20" iMac 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo, original iPhone, iPhone 4, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 4GB RAM, 250GB HD, 128MB VRAM

Posted on Oct 20, 2010 2:25 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

raluubluu

Level 1

4 points

Aug 7, 2017 4:13 AM in response to Mika Inkinen

I had this problem recently too.

For me it was a problematic of where my 'unread' emails were. They were in a subfolder (not in inbox) which I haven't checked in months.

So maybe u should also check all other folders ( in the left side - bottom)

Reply

Answer 2

Dec 6, 2010 7:35 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

I have had a few times where I thought I was seeing the same thing as you, then I found it was really seeing an unread message in a folder other than the inbox and reporting that as my unread message in the badge.

Another thing I see form time to time is that I may read all the messages in my inbox and when I back out to the accounts list, it still shows the same number of unread messages For me the solution is quite simple, I scroll the accounts list until that account no longer shows on the screen, then when I scroll it back in view, it now properly shows no unread messages. If your iPhone mail app is having trouble reaching your mail server this could easily be the cause for your "phantom" messages.

Reply

Answer 3

Mika Inkinen Author

Level 2

251 points

Oct 20, 2010 3:05 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

Turns out the Mail on the iPhone no longer received new messages that did arrive to the account, but continued to show that there were five unread messages in the inbox when there were none.

I tried deleting the account altogether, hard restarting the phone, and the adding the same account again, and once again it showed five unread messages when there were none in the inbox.

Any other suggestions? Other than a full restoration?

Reply

Answer 4

krtrice

Level 1

6 points

Feb 21, 2011 7:06 AM in response to Mika Inkinen

I get this issue every single day, and it is specifically reproducible. Here is the scenario:

1) I have two mail accounts configured on my iPhone, one is my work account and is disabled on the phone, the other is my gmail account which is always enabled on my phone

2) Each morning, when I head into work I enabled my work email account so I can start reading my work emails for the day. This downloads all the new messages from the server and displays them as unread.

3) I read some of them, but not all of them.

4) Once I get to my office, I read all of the rest of my new work emails from the Mail app on my MacBook Pro.
EXPECTED: The messages that are read on the mail app are updated as read messages
OBSERVED: On my iphone, not all of the messages have their statuses changed to read. Some of them always remain as unread messages

5) Next, I delete some of the messages read from my computer from the email server altogether.
EXPECTED: These messages would also appear deleted when using the mail app on my iPhone
OBSERVED: Not only are the messages not deleted, but they are still listed as unread

The only way to resolve this each day is for me to select each message and view it for a second to have the unread message indicator removed. I have to turn off the mail account and turn it back on for it to correctly sync with the mail server and correct the mistakes.

There is clearly a problem within the iPhone mail app with retrieving updates from the mail servers.

I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1 that I purchased in November. Before that, I had an iPhone 3G S and never experienced the issue on my 3G S. My MacBook Pro was used with both devices.

Reply

Answer 5

Sep 28, 2011 4:13 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

I have had this problem many times and I am not certain what causes it,but I do know how to fix it. From mail, click on the mail account that has the phantom unread e-mails. Go to the mailbox tab across the top menu, then select rebuild. This rebuilds the mailbox from your IMAP account and has fixed the problem for me everytime.

Reply

Answer 6

jsiddo

Level 1

5 points

Mar 28, 2012 7:12 AM in response to Mika Inkinen

This has happened to me several times (including this morning actually), but this solution has always seemed to work for me:

Send a test email to yourself from the account that is showing the phantom message to the same account. Once you send the email and your phone downloads the new incoming mail, open the new test email and that should clear it.

Hope this helps someone. Thanks!

Reply

Answer 7

Oct 5, 2012 2:01 PM in response to jennie_lee

I found this solution an another thread and it worked wonders without having to reset ANYTHING!!!

I just had this issue when setting up an email account on my iphone.. I tried everything that was mentioned but to no resolution. I then went into the Email Settings and switched "Mail" to OFF (Do Not Delete Account), then switched "Mail" back ON. This resolved my issue.

Reply

Answer 8

Joey C.

Level 1

13 points

Oct 15, 2012 12:46 PM in response to componentgeek

This worked for my iPhone 5, however I did the following:

Went into email settings and turned email to "Off"

Exited back to home screen and turned off the iphone

Turned iphone back on

Went into email settings and turned email "On"

This cleared the unread email notification, and when I went into email, my old email messages were not there. Therefore, I went back into settings and selected "Show 200 Recent Messages" and then refreshed my inbox, and my old email messages started to come back into view.

This was the only solution that worked for me, tried everything else.

Reply

Answer 9

Haxley

Level 1

20 points

Oct 23, 2012 8:18 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

What worked for me:

I have 6 email accounts on my iPhone

To get rid of phantom unread emails (17 in total) I went to settings, turned off email for all each account individually, then turned them back on.

Some say to restart phone after turning off email, but I did not need to.

These phantom emails came about for me because I used the search function in the email app.

Reply

Answer 10

gumdoc2

Level 1

5 points

Sep 19, 2013 6:17 AM in response to Colin_L

I figured it out. Go to your in box and open all inboxes. Then select edit from upper right. Then select mark all from bottom left, then select mark all as unread. Give it a sec and then do the same thing but select mark all as read. Then it updates and removes the mystey unread badge.😎 worked for me and have not come back.

Reply

Answer 11

Tad12

Level 1

9 points

Nov 29, 2010 3:03 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

I'm having the same problem with my Yahoo email account. Showing 3 unread messages, when none are really unread. I've tried deleting and restoring as well, with no luck.

Reply

Answer 12

fractal$

Level 1

27 points

Aug 30, 2011 2:38 PM in response to xaedelus

got excited there for a minute - but alas - did not work for me 😟

Reply

Answer 13

Sep 16, 2013 11:30 AM in response to Mika Inkinen

Awesome, it worked, thanks much!! 🙂

Reply

Answer 14

Jan 5, 2017 5:03 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

Turning it on and off didn't work for me. But what I realized was I had marked an email as unread, little did I know, it marked the whole thread as unread. Once I found the offending thread and marked it as read (manually through swiping left and tapping Mark... > as read, not just by opening it), the messages cleared away.

Reply

Answer 15

Aug 9, 2017 8:17 AM in response to Shirelz

Although I appreciate your collaboration on the issue, the last 2 posters clearly do not truly understand the issue. If it could be remedied by this, we would be doing that already.

My phantom emails can only be purged by removing the account, power cycling the phone, and readding the account... only to have it occur again at some random future point. Right now I have 3 in my drafts folder, 3 in Junk, and 1 in trash. This is MUCH better than it has been in the past admittedly as it has been some time since I "refreshed" my account with the above procedure. Usually in the past they would accrue up to the triple figures before I would "refresh" out of frustration. I am unaware if something has changed, but it doe seem better.

To the last 2 posters, these emails are not in any subfolder, hidden, or can be removed by "marking all as read." They are phantoms, they are not there physically (unless stuck in a cache file somewhere in the mail app) and cannot be viewed or modified by any means.

Reply