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

This worked for me

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5383931

I ended up deleting 20 unread (read) emails and since then haven't had the problem any more. This can't be the "official correct" solution though.

Totally worked! I had two that were driving me crazy. Had to turn the phone off while mail was off but it worked wonders! Thanks!!

Hi All,

I had a similar problem when upgrading to iOS 7, I have 4 different email accounts on my iPhone5 and one of my POP email accounts showed that I had 2 unread messages after the upgrade (on both my iPhone and iPad). I tried many of the supplied solutions posted here but nothing worked, I then then turned the problem around and wondered if it was a problem with my POP email provider. So I telnet'd into my POP account using the Terminal console and ran a LIST command which listed all the email currently stored on the server, along with their size, and discovered the first two messages listed had a 0 byte count. I then deleted these two messages using the DELE command, then refreshed the Mail app on my iPhone (and iPad) and the two phantom messages disappeared. I found the necessary POP commands here: http://www.yuki-onna.co.uk/email/pop.html although I'm sure there are many more to be found with a google search that may be a bit easier to read.

Hope this helps.

~s

This post started in 2010 and I am amazed that people are still having the same problem now (October 2013).

I am referring now to an iPad Mini which I bought in January 2013, which did not have this problem until about the time that Apple released their new operating system about a month ago.. It is currently showing 35 unread emails and rising.

I spent 4 hours talking to an Apple help line yesterday who knew his stuff and after two complete resets it did not resolve the problem. He concluded that the problem lay with the provider. In this case Yahoo. This opinion was reinforced to him because my iphone, with an earlier version of the operating system was experiencing the same problem and therefore could not, in his opinion be caused by the new operating system, which sounds logical..

I then spoke to a top tier Yahoo/Sky help line at length who again knew his his stuff. After a great of experimentation, he concluded that there must be unread mail in my folders, which have been read, but were regarded by the software, as unread. I went through each folder and not only checked that there were no emails marked as unread (with the little blue dot against them), but opened each and every email. The number of unread emails stayed exactlly the same.

He advised me to download the Yahoo Mail App and use that in preference to the ipad mail, which I did and I am now using that. Unfortunately the Yahoo Mail app does not indicate whether a new email has been received without opening the application, so that does not really advance the situation..

The Apple representaive told me that he would report the poroblem to their developers. The Yahoo representative did not really come up with a final conclusion, except that he believed it was a problem with the iPad, did not sound too encouraging as regards the matter being investigated any further..

One of the bits of advice I was given at the first tier Yahoo helpline was to ensure that on the server the line relating to pop and forwarding was checked ' dont allow download spam mail'. This does not apply in my case because I am using imap and there is no similar option for imap.

It's high time Apple and the internet providers, particular Yahoo, got their heads together and came up with a fix for this problem because it is obvious that countless people are having the same problem.

Does Apple ever take any notice of these poosts, or is it just hot air?. Sounds as though that is the case if it has been going on since 2010.

I have an iPhone 6 plus. I have the same problem. This problem keeps occurring even after the 9.1 update The turning off email corrects the problem but I have to keep repeating this step every other day. I have three email accounts on this phone and the only one that gets the phantom emails is an Exchange account with my company's Outlook 2013.

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.

To all those saying "this worked," has this been a permanent fix for your mailbox?

I myself am an Exchange user on a hosted exchange plan with Go Daddy on Exchange Server 2013 I believe.

I continually get "Unread" messages mainly in the "Junk Mail" folder, but occasionally it starts in the "Trash" folder as well. Over time, this number continues to accumulate and I will see the number as a notification in the folder tree. It is extremely annoying.

I agree that turning Mail off, resetting, and turning it back on clears this up. Temporarily.

The first time I accumulate a decent number of unread messages again in Junk, whether I swipe and delete them or Edit/Trash All, The middle of the display will show "No Mail" but there will be unread messages again. The fix may stick for a short while, but the glitch always returns.

I have tried with the account set to push to the affected folders, as well as fetch or manual. This glitch can surface again even when deleting all my Junk Mail directly from my Outlook 2016 client. Same when I was on Outlook 2013 and even Outlook 2010. As soon as I return to iOS mail and the Junk Mail or other folder "syncs up," bam Unread Messages may return.

At this point I am convinced this is a LONG STANDING issue with iOS Mail on Apple's side. Seeing users suffering this with Gmail, Yahoo, and other services, It is not an Exchange or hosting issue. None of my other email clients show these phantom unread messages, only iOS mail. SOmething gets stuck in cache or similar and can only be fixed by toggling the account and refreshing it.

In my case, the issue always returns. I am curious if that is the same for all. It is a nice workaround, but if you cannot live with the unread messages count showing in the folder tree it is frustrating to need to do this every couple of days to keep the number low or accurate.

I am tempted at this point to ditch iOS Mail app and maybe use Outlook. For whatever reasons, I have always preferred the default app but this is ridiculous already. THis thread started what, over 4 years ago? FIX IT APPLE!

I am good at testing and resolving issues like this but so far I myself am struggling to find anything other than what has already been mentioned, both on my own and by digging through the interwebs.

Should any of you want to try and tackle this as a team, just post and I will join in. I have been quietly lurking and following this topic for some time. I will still be watching and ready to jump in head first.

Let's either get this fixed or help Apple actually fix it. Fingers crossed for iOS 10. Has anyone here been using iOS 10 already and able to confirm whether or not this problem still manifests? Thanks for reading and any future conversation.

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.

This works, but you have to close the mail app in order for it to clear, or the cache will retain the unread email amount. So before you turn the mail on and off, double click home to pull up any open apps that are in the background. Touch the minus sign to close the mail app, then go back to home and proceed with the steps mentioned.

Hmmmm, I did do a hard restart on my phone first, not sure if that will make a difference, I also made sure that online and on my mac all emails were marked as read. I tried some of the other suggestions first, but none of them worked!

I had this same issue with a Yahoo account. After the iOS7 update it started showing showing i had 16 unread messages but when i logged in on my computer i only had 3 in my inbox and they weren't unread. Previous to that i had also cleared out every other folder to make sure it wasn't anything in there.

This is what i did to finally get it to get rid of the ghost unread messages:

Settings > Mail > Yahoo (or whatever your troubled account is) > Account: > SMTP > Primary Server > Server = off.

I backed out once screen and went into Advanced > S/MIME = On, left everything else under that as whatever the default was.

I backed out all the way to the home screen and went back in to turn on the SMTP Primary Server. When i backed out the 2nd time, the ghost messages were gone!

I'm not 100% sure what the S/MIME does or if it even helped clear the issue but since I didnt check right after i turned the server off i'm gonna assume it was also part of the solution.

Hope that helps someone out there!

Your probably right about that, except Yahoo (really AT&T email) is an IMAP account and if the unread email does not exist in the host server, then how do you go about marking them read on the iPhone....

For now, I simply have turned the badge app icon off on the problem email account in the Notification Center...

Interesting data to add. The problem email account (AT&T/Yahoo mail) is accessed by both myself and my wifie. It appears that phantom unread email exists when she deletes the message from her BB (yeah I know, its a work phone and she has no choice...). My unread phantom email was 5 two days ago, up to 13 yesterday and now 14 today - all of those emails were deleted by my wife from her BB...

The deleted emails by her are in the trash folder and once marked as read or completely deleted, it still shows as unread phantom email on my iPhone.

To make the matter more odd, my other AT&T/Yahoo account has no problems at all... go figure....