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Mika Inkinen Author

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

Top-ranking reply

raluubluu

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Aug 7, 2017 4:13 AM

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)

View in context

298 replies

Feb 4, 2016 1:15 PM in response to Colin_L

I have the same problem with my iPhone 6. The last app I downloaded I think caused this problem by hiding advertisements in my email account. How I corrected this problem. Go to settings then under settings go to Mail, Contacts, Calen...once there go to (in my case Gmail). Once there turn off Mail. After you do that get out of settings and go to your email app. Once there all that you should see is your phantom emails which I put in the spam folder. Now go back to settings and turn your email back on and hopefully it will be fixed.

Feb 5, 2016 9:47 AM in response to Joey C.

Thank you. This is a lot better than deleting the email account and re-installing it, which is what I did a couple of weeks ago for my Hotmail account. Today my work email account was doing the same thing and

Feb 14, 2016 4:14 AM in response to Joey C.

This worked for me also. It took me a minute to figure out where to turn off mail (mail/exchange account) and I had to reboot to get it to work.

Feb 17, 2016 5:01 AM in response to Joey C.

Thank you - the unread mail message was driving me crazy!

Feb 18, 2016 12:25 PM in response to Joey C.

Excellent Joey C. thank you - this worked.

bgelf

Level 1

0 points

Feb 23, 2016 7:54 AM in response to jsiddo

Thanks jsiddo this worked for me on my 5S running iOS9.2.1

chmmom

Level 1

0 points

Feb 25, 2016 8:18 AM in response to Joey C.

Thank you! This worked for me!

nkirklan

Level 1

0 points

Feb 29, 2016 1:24 PM in response to Mika Inkinen

Hi,

I had this issue, I just went into my inbox and marked all emails as unread, then marked them all as read...phantom email gone.

Regards,

Nick

PSH1970

Level 1

29 points

Mar 2, 2016 10:36 AM in response to Dannybill

Yes this also worked for me!

1. In settings turn off the offending mail account

2. Power down phone (I did this with holding down power and the home button to reset the phone - you don't lose anything like music etc)

3. Turn phone back on

4. Turn the email account back on in settings

This DID cause my phone to re-read the messages and the count is corrected. Previously, I have had "Junk Mail" of 2 and it was like that for months. Now I have no number showing. At last!!

Mar 15, 2016 2:31 AM in response to Joey C.

Worked like a charm!

Thanks a lot mate 🙂

Mar 18, 2016 6:17 AM in response to Mika Inkinen

MY problem was a little more stubborn. I had to disable mail sync temporarily and reboot the phone. If I just turned mail sync off and back on it still showed one unread phantom message. Once I rebooted and then turned mail sync back on the phone redownloaded all the emails and didn't show the one unread anymore. This is under mail and accounts, go to the account and then switch mail off. This will remove all the emails from the account but when switched back on will redownload them.