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

JAD2121 - thankyou - just done that and we will see - but as it is doing it - it is reimporting all the messages again ..... i have VERY large mailboxes - so it will be a while - and it might be a step that is not noticed for small boxes - will ping in a minute if it worked.

ok - it finished - problem not fixed and it introduced an extra problem - in that around 20 messages got re time stamped and lost their headers so 'from' is sender unknown - so for me - this did not work

Hi there,

I think I may have found the problem. I too suffered from inaccurate message count in Mac Mail for months and it was making me bananas. If you sort by unread, you'll notice that notes you've created will show up first. At least it did for me as I often create notes from my iPhone and they sync with my mail client. I went through all of the notes and watched the message counter clear itself.

Hope this info is helpful. I'm so glad to see my ACTUAL email count.

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

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.

I had the same issue after upgrading to iOS 5 and couldn't figure it out. I synced my phone (via USB) and lo' and behold it's gone. I think it gets stuck in the sync process...Have you tried that?

Jad2121,

It worked for me, thanks.

I had this phantom situation on my Mac not my iPhone like the others.

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this solution!!! I spent 3 hours trying to fix this bug, and when I found your solution it worked like a charm. I think my bug may have been institigated by my FWD setting selected in my old G-mail account (I'm brand new to @me mail). So, I've turned off my old G-mail forwarding and I will just check it from time to time.

I have had this problem (and others) ever since upgrading to iOS5. Neither syncing or resetting the phone seems to have any effect. Sometimes random actions seem to "clear" the badge. For example, scrolling down to the "accounts" pane and opening and closing all of the boxes associated with MobileMe. Sometimes not.

JAD: Thank you! Worked perfectly for me.

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!

Thanks jad2121 worked like a charm!!!

I had this problem and rebuilding didn't help. I went to my iPad and found that there was an unread message in an iCloud account that was somehow being counted as an Exchange mail due to syncing. Marking that message as read seems to have fixed it.

Jad tyvm your procedure cured my unread mail count problem. I think deleting the mail envelope files instead of moving them would work also.

I am still having an undread message problem. I've tried all the suggested solutions:

Delted and resynched account on my iPad and Mac, Rebuilt the mailbox, built a Smart Mailbox to display unread messages, gone through Library, gone through the website online (it's a university mail account that's giving me problems). When I have no unread messages, my dock shows 13. When I receive messages, that number increases, but I can't get the 13 unread messages to go away. What's next?