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

Thank you c_cake! This is the only solution that worked for me. I had to go in and mark junk mail as read. It was on my MS exchange account. Once I did that it cleared all the phantom new mail notifications.

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?

Turned off the email and turned it back on and it worked like a charm. Although it has to now download all of my emails again from the exchange server but no more phantom emails.

I had same problems, I went in and deleted the email acct from settings, readied it and then they were gone, FYI this happened on the iPad mini!

Quick fix.

1. Open your email folder
2. Click Edit (top right)
3. Select All (bottom left)
4. Mark All As Unread
5. Select All (again)
6. Mark All As Read

Good luck!

On wifi. GO to Setting. Mails. Sync unlimited. Wait for 1 hour for it to sync. Everything will be cleared.

thank you - it worked.

had to turn the phone off/on though but ... it worked 🙂

also had 'unread' mail but couldn't find it so I marked all emails as unread then marked them all as read and they disappeared1

Thanks this totally worked!

Went into Mail settings --> Exchange --> Turned switch off for MAIL

Powered down phone

Powered on phone

Phantom Email was gone.

I Solved it by turning off my iCloud email in settings. When i went back to my mail app they wear gone. I then turned iclud Mail back on.

Guess what, i have the answer. go into the library folder (in lion they make it so you can't see this folder. to get into it, go to your "go" menu from finder with the option button held down and go to library), then go to mail, then go to the folder V2, then go to the folder "maildata". move three files to your desktop (or anywhere out of the way): "Envelope Index", "Envelope index-shm" and "envelope index-wal". then re-start mail. it should fix the whole problem. It worked for me. after this, you can delete the old files from wherever you put them.

btw i use lion, so this may not work in snow leopard.

OMG! THANK YOU componentgeek! THIS SOLVED MY PROBLEM!!!!! The unread mail badge on my iPhone 5 has been driving me insane. I've killed my exchange email account again and again, a colossal waste of time, but it would clear the badge. Turning the mail off, then back on is SO MUCH SIMPLER! Genius. Thanks! Now, Apple---FIX THE PROBLEM FROM HAPPENING!

I believe the "search for oldest email" technique may work is it forces download of all emails to allow "select all/mark as read".

The technique I used was to keep scrolling to the bottom of my email list until new ones stopped appearing then waited some minutes then selected all/marked as read.

I tried it all and it all failed until I hit upon this solution. I had seventeen phantom emails in my sent folder but not one "actual" email in it. When I first tried this with one email, it didn't work, but then I sent a second one and, once there were multiple emails — whoosh — the phantom emails and their numbers disappeared immediately. That said, I only have one account in iPhone's Mail app, it's a POP account, and I don't use my phone as an email repository.

I (and my OCD) could not be more grateful, gumdoc2.

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.