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

1. In settings turn off the offending mail account

2. Power down phone

3. Turn phone back on

4. Turn the email account back on in settings

This causes phone to reread the messages and count is corrected

IPhone 5 IOS 6+

For me the turning phone on and odd was a temporary fix. What really fixed it was searching my inbox for all emails with my name (under the "To" category) and all of a sudden many more unread emails in various folders showed up. I "read" these and ,y unread count was corrected.

completely deleting the account, force quitting Mail, power cycling the phone, launching mail and readding the account worked. It should be noted that in the middle of this process, the ALL mail tab showed mail from deleted accounts.

The IMAP accounts readded cleanly. Unfortunately, POP doesn't save read/unread state - it's an older, less featured protocol, so I had to manually make the phone mark 2200 emails as read. Fortunately, of my four accounts I use on the phone (I work on email server software for a living), that account had the least amount of email, the rest were 6k, 8k and more.

FWIW, I backed up and sync'd before upgrading to iOS7 and all mail was working fine for the year I've had the phone prior to the upgrade. It should also be note that I know several people that upgraded with no problems, some of them people I work with that probably have just as many emails and accounts as I do (if not more).

This happened on my iPhone when I upgraded to iOS7 on my POP account. Three "unread emails" but there weren't any. I did the reset trick; I even trashed all the old emails on the server. Only one thing worked, and it sounds drastic, but it's not. Delete your email account on the iPhone/iPad (having carefully noted all the details), then add it back again. The only thing that got rid of the phantoms once and for all.

I think I know what the problem is but don't know how to fix it. This has come up several time before, even on my imac. In the mail there appears a message that says no sender. I have been unable to open, read or delete them. Previously, over time they seem to dissapear and then the count goes to normal. I have previously been unable to remove them manually, but usually I could see them. The phantom emails are on my yahoo account. I can tempoprarly reset the badge bty selecting all as unread and then all as read. But then the no sender messages repopulate. I can see them briefly as I search "no sender" and see that they have the unread blue dot next to them (they appear in the seach for 1-2 seconds), but they dissappear quickly and remain hidden. I can not get them to show up if i access the mail directly via the web. Not sure if those no sender messages are viruses or spam or simply a glitch, but I have seen them occur on several mail servers. Because they can't be opened they show up as unread, and even if you mark them as read, the server can not open them so they reset to unread!

Access the problem email account. Go to EDIT. Select all emails and mark as UNREAD. Return to home screen. You will see on the the app button a huge number (I had 13,505 emails, and only 10,000 showed now as UNREAD. Return to the problem email account. Return to EDIT. Select all email and mark as READ. Problem solved.

The flag and unflag thing only worked temporarily for me, as I have done it several times over the past few days since the update on both my phone and iPad. I found something else that seemed to work (so far permanently). I went to the badges section under mail and turned off the badges for the offending account. Then powered down the phone for a few min. Then turned it back on, and then turned the badges back on. It showed the phantom emails again but then in 5-10 min they were gone! We'll see if this one lasts so far has been good for 2 hours.

I have a business account and a gmail account... Tried all the above options to try and solve the problem. I updated to io7 today and the problem started. I have had the same problem in previous versions of the iOS normally this problem rectified itself on its own. This time however the gmail fixed itself but the other account didn't and showed over 12000 messages.

I have fixed the problem by continually scrolling down and downloading all the messages I have on the server. Then I mark all as read as described in other options to fix the problem. I now have no messages unread!!!--- thank goodness. However this way of solving took quite a long time as only 250 messages are downloaded at a time (a long way to 12000). But it worked.

As much as I love my IPhone it's crappy quirks like this which will probably lead me to trying Android when my current contract runs out! And I am an Apple fan, just a bit sick of having to re-install all my apps when I upgrade to another OS... Which I had to do every time I upgrade!

Had 133 Phantom "unread" emails.

This was all I did to remove the incorrect notification bubble:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Settings > Mail, Contacts and Calenders

Go to the account that the unread emails are supposedly from - tap on it - in the account info there will be a toggle switch to turn the account off -- do so - then hit "done" at the top.

Turn off the phone.

Turn it back on.

Go back and turn the mail account on again.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Phantom mail gone.

I did the following as my yahoo and live accounts recently changed to IMAP on my iPhone 4 IOS 7.0.3 operating system. Deleted the oldd accounts on the phone and re-set as IMAP. Then did the same on my Outlook but also ticked the purge email after viewing in the Advanced Settings. This then cleared the bloody lot and I've not had a problem since........

This is what i did to resolve the unread emails in yahoo

Go to mails > Accounts > select Yahoo account > select inbox > from top right hand corner > select Edit > from left hand bottom corner > select mark all as un read > wait few seconds then mark all as read. Then exit out the edit settings. It should resolve the issue .

This worked for me.

Here is a much simpler way that woked for me.

1) send yourself a 'test' email.

2) open it

3) press edit

4) mark all as read

5) Highlight and delete.

6) back out (you may have even more 'ghost emails at this stage. don't worry

7) repeat steps 1-6. you should have no 'ghosts'

I think I solved the phantom email issue:

I just sent an email to the account that showed unread messages via my computer, then opened it on iphone and marked 'all read', all 606 unread messages have now disappeared. Finally!!

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.

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: