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

I tried everything else that everyone is suggesting and this is the ONLY process that Worked!! Delete your account and then go back in and Add it back on.

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

Well, without doing anything, other than leaving my iPhone turned on in the Email application with the unread mailboxes active the phone eventually found all of the so called "unread" messages, some going back a long, long time and ones that I do recall either reading or deleting as they arrived on my phone.

All I had to do then was go back to the resective mailboxes and select them alll & mark them as read and now I have no "unread" messages on my phone ( I left this for about an hour, in which time I got a few emails that increased the unread number but cleared as normal once I'd opened them )

There's obviously a glitch in the software somewher that's causing this but mine has rectified itself 🙂

Try this it worked for my Comcast POP account and might work for your situation. I went into my email setting on IOS7, selected the account I was having problems with, went into advanced setting and under deleted messages selected the "NEVER" option (i belive the default is "after one week". After doing this I found a bunch of undread messages suddenly appearing on my phone. I then used the new feature in IOS 7 to mark them all as read. (while viewing your inbox - select the EDIT link top right, after select the MARK ALL link bottom left, and then the Mark All as READ feature. This was my final fix - GOOD LUCK!!!

What seems to work for some that cannot clear this any other way:

1. Go to All Inboxes at the top of the mailbox listing (This only works from ALL)
2. Edit, Select All
3. FLAG ALL
4. Edit, Select All
5. UNFLAG ALL

Don't know why, but this seems to work for those like myself have tried everything else to no avail.

Good luck!

This problem only started for me today.

Turning the account off and on did not work.

Turning the account off, turning the phone off, turning the phone on and the account on, did not work.

Flagging and unflagging the All Inboxes worked (at least for now).

Thanks.

MotionMan

Didn't work for me. The "unread" emails weren't in my In Box. I also tried Closing Mail and Resetting the iPhone and removing emails from the server. The only thing that got rid of the phantoms was to remove the offending POP account and set it up again.

Have you tried this....

1. Remove the email program from your open applications

2. Go into advanced setting for the email account you are having problems with and set deleted messages to "never".

3. Next go into your email account and use the edit - mark all as read function

Simple to try and worked for me after trying everything else!

Thank you - that worked. I had emptied the mailbox so I had to send myself a test message in order to have something in the box. Once I did that, I was able to edit and mark all as read. After that the 3000+ phantom messages disappeared. You cannot edit if there are no messages in the mailbox.

G-mail user:

Fixed my issue, but I only had 1 phantom unread mail.

I was having no luck with the select all -> unread -> read method. But when I turned the device off, (iPhone 5 latest rev.) to clear the RAM and cache, I repeated the method. Went into the mail app and retried it.

A mail from a few days ago popped up as unread. So it fixed itself. I'm OCD about notification badges on my screen, it gives me anxiety when I see one. So even if I don't read the mail thoroughly, I still like to mark it as read.

Hope this might help some.

Sorry...not really tech savy instructions.

so, after pressing 'edit' the 'mark all as read' option should display. press that, then delete, and, 'done'.

for some reason this doulbled the number of 'pantom' emails on my phone (a 5) but repeating the whole process erased them all. make sense?

The 'Search 'unread' suggestion is probably easier in hindsight.

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 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.

Well, since I couldn't turn on/off email, I killed my email account and then reestablished it. No more phantom emails I'm happy to say, tho it did take a while for the phone to delete all the emails that were on it.

Hey, I had the same problem too, and tried everything above. Then I found my own solution.

First, go to the inbox of the account you're having trouble with.

Then, mark about 20 emails "unread" (seperately). IT MUST BE 20 or more.

Then, go to the Unread Email box, and mark everything as "read".

And your phantom emails are gone.