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

This worked for my iPhone 5, however I did the following:

Went into email settings and turned email to "Off"

Exited back to home screen and turned off the iphone

Turned iphone back on

Went into email settings and turned email "On"

This cleared the unread email notification, and when I went into email, my old email messages were not there. Therefore, I went back into settings and selected "Show 200 Recent Messages" and then refreshed my inbox, and my old email messages started to come back into view.

This was the only solution that worked for me, tried everything else.

I figured it out. Go to your in box and open all inboxes. Then select edit from upper right. Then select mark all from bottom left, then select mark all as unread. Give it a sec and then do the same thing but select mark all as read. Then it updates and removes the mystey unread badge.😎 worked for me and have not come back.

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!

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.

I found this solution an another thread and it worked wonders without having to reset ANYTHING!!!

I just had this issue when setting up an email account on my iphone.. I tried everything that was mentioned but to no resolution. I then went into the Email Settings and switched "Mail" to OFF (Do Not Delete Account), then switched "Mail" back ON. This resolved my issue.

What worked for me:

I have 6 email accounts on my iPhone

To get rid of phantom unread emails (17 in total) I went to settings, turned off email for all each account individually, then turned them back on.

Some say to restart phone after turning off email, but I did not need to.

These phantom emails came about for me because I used the search function in the email app.

I went into settings on both my iPhone 5 and iPad and simply turned the Mail option off on the account that was showing the phantom number -- for me it was an exchange account -- (waited for a sec while it turned off the mail sync), then, before turning it back on, I went to that specific inbox and the phantom number disappeared. Then I went back into my settings and turned it back on. After I did this (didn't just turn it off and on, but went to the inbox itself) it worked and the phantom number is gone.

Not sure why, but I feel I can breathe freely again! It's crazy how this little stuff can drive us mad!!! Best of luck out there.

After several hours, I believe I've found the solution to the 1,000's of unread emails showing up in the iPhone badge app from GMAIL after upgrading to iOS7. Turns out the problem, at least for me, was with Gmail. Fix is the following:

1) Go to full site for Gmail on a computer and type in the following in the Gmail search field "is:unread" - without the quotes.

2) Then click on drop down arrow under the search field and click on "All".

3) Then go to middle of screen and click on "Select all conversations that match this search".

4) Then go to the More button under the search field and click on "Mark as read"

5) You will then receive a warning sign and click OK.

GMAIL will then process all the mail in your account from the beginning date you set it up and mark everything as read. When you next log on to your iPhone mail account it will refresh and show no unread emails in your inbox and only when new emails arrive will the count begin again. Hope this helps.

After trying the previous suggestions the following worked for me:

1. This is probably the most difficult part - think of someone who emailed you months/years ago or someone that you have a long history of email going back months/years - objective is to get your phone to show emails that are available but not shown in your mailbox in the mail app.

2. Go to the home screen of your iphone, pull down the spotlight search and input the email contact you thought of in step 1 and select "Search" in the keyboard

3. Scroll through the spotlight search results and look for emails (from the contact) then scroll to the last email/oldest email shown and select it. The email will open up and hopefully the email is an older email (months, years old)

4. In the upper left of the email that opens select "All Inboxes"

5. Select "Edit" then "Mark All" and finally "Mark as Read"

6. After the "Mark as Read" is complete select "Mailboxes" in the upper left to return to all mailboxes

7. In all mailboxes the unread mailbox(es) should show cleared/zero

8. Select "All Inboxes" nd you should return to your mailbox with the lastest email shown on top

Hopefully this resolves the issue. Good Luck!

After trying the previous suggestions the following worked for me:

1. This is probably the most difficult part - think of someone who emailed you months/years ago or someone that you have a long history of email going back months/years - objective is to get your phone to show emails that are available but not shown in your mailbox in the mail app.

IMPORTANT - The email you search for must have been received in the mailbox that has the unread issue

2. Go to the home screen of your iphone, pull down the spotlight search and input the email contact you thought of in step 1 and select "Search" in the keyboard

3. Scroll through the spotlight search results and look for emails (from the contact) then scroll to the last email/oldest email shown and select it. The email will open up and hopefully the email is an older email (months, years old)

4. In the upper left of the email that opens select "All Inboxes"

5. Select "Edit" then "Mark All" and finally "Mark as Read"

6. After the "Mark as Read" is complete select "Mailboxes" in the upper left to return to all mailboxes

7. In all mailboxes the unread mailbox(es) should show cleared/zero

8. Select "All Inboxes" nd you should return to your mailbox with the lastest email shown on top

Hopefully this resolves the issue. Good Luck!

I had thousands of emails become marked unread yesterday on my iphone and ipad. I did all the scrolling down and marked everything as read but still had a few hundred on each device. Went to the Genius Bar tonight. I'm on Roadrunner email, set to save a copy on the web. They told me to go to my RR web account and delete everything in my inbox or put it in a folder. It worked!!!

Gmail fix:

I tried all the fixes here for an identical issue with my gmail account, but kept being left with 26,000+ allegedly unread emails on the iphone 5 after upgrading....

Now, it seems to be OK after the following routine, done on my PC (NB not sure how applicable this is to other email accounts)

1. (very important) - click on All Mail from the gmail menu on the left hand side of the screen (if you can't see this, it'll be revealed be selecting 'More' from the menu list). (It would appear that the emails that the iphone is referring to are not, in fact, just the ones in the inbox..... )

2. Click the 'down' arrow on the right hand end of the gmail search box (it's just by the blue button with the magnifying glass)

3. In the 'Doesn't Have' field in the Search menu, enter some gobbledygook - like "asgjihg567vfd" - something that you are certain will not be in any email. That means that all of the mail, including long-term deleted mail (not just the stuff that appears to figure in your bin), will get selected

4. In the left hand of the three grey boxes above the emails (the one with the square on it), select 'All'

5. You will see on the bar above the emails that a message comes up saying - "All 20 conversations on this page are selected.Select all conversations that match this search". Click on this to select, literally, all your emails - past, present, binned, spam, etc.

6. From the right hand control box above the emails (the one saying 'More'), select 'Mark as read'. This will take a few moments, but will work through them all.

7. When you go into the gmail account on your phone, you should see the unread email count miraculously disappear when it syncs.

This has worked for me and I hope it stays this way! The trick is that you may have lots of unread emails that you binned ages ago - but these have been resurrected through the miracle that is iOS7.

FWIW, I very much regret upgrading to iOS7 and have written to Tim Cook telling him that it's going to lose him customers - not that I expect that he will see my mail, or answer, or that he cares.......

I'm sure that would work, but why make it complicated?! :-)

I went to the account which had the phantom unread e-mails, went up to the search box and entered "unread" and the 2 phantom e-mails that had been bothering me 'magically' appeared! I simply clicked on both of them and no longer have any phantom e-mails.