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Why can't I delete email in IMAP? Driving me crazy!
When I try to delete an email on my iPhone or iPad it will not let me erase it. This is not a problem with my .mac email. Only my business email that I have on my home & work mac computers & my iPhone, and iPad. I can't make this all POP because I would spend all day deleting emails on each device. This used to not be a problem. Please help.
iPhone 4
Oh... wait sorry 😝
I mixed up IMAP and POP.
POP unfortunately does that - it keeps a copy on EVERYTHING, like nothing is synced.
IMAP, will sync back to the server and delete it from there, so when your other devices "sync" to that server - that email will also be deleted or never received to the other devices.
Unfortunately (as to my knowledge) theres no one to have a nicely synced email experience with POP - and i believe you'll be stuck dealing with all those deletions 😟.
Do you mean that it will delete from your phone, but stays on... the others ways you can access it?
Failure to word it right, so heres an example:
Say you have hotmail. You delete an email off your iPhone, but when your iPad syncs to your email, it gets that email. or if you go to your web browser to the website, that email didnt get deleted there either?
Like.. "Things aren't in sync"?
If thats what you meant - its just the type of server (IMAP). IMAP only goes one way - towards you, it doesn't stay in sync like POP. POP will communicate back to the email server when something is deleted, and deletes it from the server, so its nowhere anymore - not like IMAP where its deleted just from the one source you deleted it from.
Try this: Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose your IMAP account, Advanced, Deleted Mailbox, re-check the Trash then go back and press Done. Its weird but it has worked for me
In the past, I would erase an email off of my iPhone that was set up as an IMAP email account (this email me@ hello.tv for example) was set up on all devices as an IMAP account. It would erase that email on my ipad, macbook pro, and mac pro.
I can erase an email on my MacBook pro and my iPhone and iPad & mac pro are synced (email is thrown in trash out of inbox) BUT... When I try to erase an email off of my iPhone or iPad the following notice pops up:
Unable to Move Message
The mailbox could not be moved to the mailbox Trash.
With work I get ablot of spam and it was really easy to delete that on my iPhone. Now I have to wait until I'm in from of my computer to erase. Mobile devises (iPad & iPhone) both give the same message and won't allow me to erase.
I had this work email as a POP account for 2 days and almost killed myself. It required me to click on every email 4 times on my 4 devices. I get 300 emails a day.
Please note that I can erase my .mac account emails on all 4 devices and it all syncs perfectly.
So my question is how do I setbup my mobile devices to allow me to erase from them and it syncs on my MacBook and mac pro?
Holding my breath!!! But this totally worked!!! You are a genious. If I could hug you I would... Thank you so much. Wouldn't know about iCal stuff would you?. Just posted about thevnew upgradevand issues too..
I experienced the same thing. Just to add a note to petter33's response: when in Advanced/Deleted Mailbox, you want to select the Trash "On the Server" and not "On My iPhone" (got this from a another thread).
I initially had the latter option checked and could not delete emails from my iPhone. Switching to the Trash On the Server solved the problem.
One the problems I faced on the Ipad 3 was that the keyboard covers up the advanced option setting for the account. To access the advanced section of the account when you are editing the account, split the keyboard in two (thumb typing mode) and voila the additional settings (including advanced) become available. I advanced select the trash folder in your IMAP folders and that will uncheck the trash on the ipad setting. There did not seem to be a way to move the whole keyboard out of the way and thus I was unable to see that there was an advanced section available. This made the Ipad account settings look different than the Ipod or Itouch. Made me crazy for a couple of days.
{bowing deeply}
Thank you, petter33. That solved it for me.
@petter33, thank you so much!
this definitly solved my problem. I don't understand why it's not "on the Iphone" , but you do need to check "on the server" Thank you.🙂
Perfect! Thank you for posting this tip! Much appreciated!
I had this exact problem, and found the issue was to do with 'IMAP path prefixes'. It sounds like that is different to the problem you experienced, but for anyone else having this issue I have created a quick walkthrough on how to fix this: http://camgould.com/blog/posts/what-to-do-if-you-cant-delete-imap-emails-on-your -iphone
This worked like a charm. One clarification is that on iOS 9.x the IMAP Path Prefix is in the Incoming Settings section. No idea why that would impact this but it seems to have.
Why can't I delete email in IMAP? Driving me crazy!
