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

Hi, I have an iphone 5S and been noticing that the last week or so with Yahoo. Just posted my own question because along with this I also have strangers emails and their Facebook pics or shadows beside their email suddenly in my contacts. I am not even on Facebook. I found for the phantom emails, turning off my phone helped and resigning into Yahoo. Its just Yahoo doing it now Icloud.

The problem still persists after 5 years, rebuilding my mails accounts now.

I have had this problem on my iPhone 6. There is an easy way to get read of the Phantom unread designation.

Open mail on the iPhone.

Under Mailboxes, select "All Inboxes".

Select "Edit".

Select "Mark All".

Select "Mark as Unread".

Select "Mark as Read".

Problem solved.

Ok I just finally figured this out on my iphone5s I went into ALL INBOXES and went to EDIT then I hit mark all UNREAD then I went back into Edit and marked all READ. I had to scroll down a bit to a few emails that had multiple extensions (All grouped together ) and manually edit a few but that finally fixed it for me after such a long time of being very frustrated. Hope this helps you!

I tried Joey's solution above, but had not luck.

This is the only solution that I have found to work on the iPhone 6 plus:

This worked for me the third time I tried it. I think the key was to pull down on the screen so email refreshes after marking all unread, and doing the same when you've marked them all read again.

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts 🙂

I had this issue with my hotmail account. It was only fixed by deleting the account off the phone, then readding it as an outlook account (i manually set it up last time), by adding it as an outlook email account the issue has now gone. Good luck out there!

I was having the same trouble with the phantom emails....I have Yosemite....and, in desperation, after trying everything else, I saw this post and decided to try it. It worked! I have not had a single phantom email since. I have no idea why it worked or how it worked, but it is the fix that worked for me. Thanks so much....and I encourage everyone to give it a try.

I was having the same trouble with the phantom emails....I have Yosemite....and, in desperation, after trying everything else, I saw this post and decided to try it. It worked! I have not had a single phantom email since. I have no idea why it worked or how it worked, but it is the fix that worked for me. Thanks so much....and I encourage everyone to give it a try.

Thanks Joey, bit of a pain but we got there in the end 🙂

I Had this issue a day ago. Delete your mail account which one is showing incorrect number of unread email from settings.

Restart the Device.

Add new mailbox account again.

ENter your credentials.

Refresh your mailbox.

Problem resolved.

I Had this issue a day ago. Delete your mail account which one is showing incorrect number of unread email from settings.

Restart the Device.

Add new mailbox account again.

ENter your credentials.

Refresh your mailbox.

Problem resolved.

Same problem as you on my iPhone 5c ver 9.0.1 and your solution didn't work, but thanks

for the offering. Anyhow, found another forum online and their solution worked as follows - in mailbox click on Edit,

Mark All 'unread' as 'read', exit out, and go back in....voila, cleared!

THe issue is that after an update, it presumes all email on your server was unread, and, it cannot load all of them if you leave email on your server for a while. When you delete the older email on your server (not on your Apple product)' it clears the "unread" emails. Afterwards, do "mark all as read" on your Apple product.