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iPhone 4S Mail All Inboxes shows 4,294,967,289 unread mail messages

1. On my iPhone 4S in the Mail app, if I go into the Mailboxes and look at my Inboxes it shows 4,294,967,289 mail messages (see screen shot). This number is clearly incorrect, as I don't have any unread emails, and my accounts don't have anywhere near this number of emails. Of course my mail icon on the home screen doesn't show anything because the number is (incorrectly) too large.


2. On my iPad 2 in the Mail app (with the same iCloud and gmail accounts all synced up), if I go into the Mailboxes and look at my Inboxes it shows no unread mail messages, which is correct. If I get a new message, then it will show the number of unread messages accurately (1 or 2 or whatever).


Has anyone seen this problem? I deleted all my mail accounts in the iPhone and added them back again, but that did not correct the problem. I am up to date on all software as well.


Thanks for the help.


User uploaded file

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Sep 6, 2012 2:25 PM

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9 replies

Sep 6, 2012 6:26 PM in response to TeeJay6

The number 4,294,967,290 corresponds to negative 6 in base 32.


It's a bug with the way gmail is reporting unread messages, or the way your iPhone is counting them. A restore should fix it.


Short of restoring your iPhone try this: Make sure you have read all your messages and the unread message count remains 4,294,967,290. Then, send six messages to your gmail account. Do not open them.


If that resets your "unread mail" count to zero then never open those six messages 🙂

Sep 7, 2012 11:35 AM in response to John Galt

Wow, thanks, sending 6 messages and leaving them unread cleared up the problem for gmail!


Can you please help me with the equivalent number of unread messages to send my iCloud account? I tried to use a base 32 converter on the web (http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/numbers-ex.html) to figure out the iCloud number 4294967295, but couldn't get a meaningful number.


Thanks so much for your help, this is such a strange problem.

Nov 9, 2012 11:35 PM in response to TeeJay6

I had the same issue and I've searched online for a couple of hours and finally I did something that solved the problem:

1- go to the mail app and press edit.

2- press on any email and then press ( Mark ) and keep holding.

3- press on the same email that was chosen again and remove your finger from the ( Mark ) button

4- choose ( Mark as unread ) and all the emails you have will be marked as UNREAD.

5- now do the same method in an opposite way.

6- press edit and then choose any email and press (Mark) and keep holding and then remove your finger and a message will appear. Choose ( Mark as read ) and you will notice all the emails will be marked as READ.

This way worked for me so I hope it works for you too.

iPhone 4S Mail All Inboxes shows 4,294,967,289 unread mail messages

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