Q: cannot clear deleted voicemail on IOS7

I'm attempting to "clear" the 2200+ voicemails in my "delete" box, thinking this may help give me control over my visual vm once again.  It is just not responding to anything I'm trying to do -- won't delete msgs, playback takes forever, etc.  But it's taking a very long time, and I have to reboot after each round of "clear all" messages.  I'll let you all know what I find -- it's the only thing I can think of to try at this point!!!

One week later .. 7.1 working like a champ.  Deleted voicemails staying deleted.  Life is good.

Hope upgrading to 7.1 works for you, too.  Genius told me the update included a specific bug fix for this issue.

I can report that updating to iOS 7.1 has fixed this problem for me.  If you have not yet updated, I highly recommend you do so asap.  Finally no more phantom voicemails!!

Didn't work for me. I'm on iPhone 4, iOS7.1 and deleted all voicemail messages, then I go to "Deleted Messages" where there's 50 phantom messages that it won't let me delete. Note - These are all "Blocked" callers that somehow were able to leave messages even though they were blocked. Now I can't delete those messages, they go back over a year and I can't ever delete them.

I've tried turning on Airplane Mode, that didn't work either.

I'm just posting here so Apple knows that the iOS7 update didn't quite fix the issue. Hopefully they read these things. I'm going to use the Feedback form and send this along too. If you use Block Caller there shouldn't be any voicemail messages, especially if you can never delete them.

I don't think you have the original issue in this topic.  It's frustrating that you have a voicemail issue, but you should make a new post. This thread was for the issue where you delete messages from the deleted box and then they come back into the normal inbox. (Leaving the deleted box empty)

I was having this same issue.  Had 376 deleted voicemail messages.

I called my voicemail from my phone (hold down the 1 button on the dialer)

Listened to two messages and deleted them.

Hit the * button to disconnect.

Waited a few minutes.

Went to the Voicemail tab in Phone.

Scrolled down to Deleted Messages.

Clear All was now in Blue, so I pressed it and after thinking for several minutes they were all gone.

Rebooted for fun.  Still gone.  Haven't come back at this point.

Good luck!

AT&T, iPhone 5, iOS 7.1.1

I called AT&T and they told me that visual voicemail acts weird when used on wifi. The rep suggested I turn off wifi and try it on celluar connection only. It worked. This has been a problem for me for ages and so far this celluar only solution has worked.

Hope this helps.

I was hopeful this very frustrating problem would also be corrected by 7.1 and it did not.  My voicemails continue to reappear after I delete them (at times while I am listening to a new voicemail) and I am not able to clear deleted messages as the "clear" button is not active. I did not have any of these problems on the iPhone 5.

I have had the same problem for months, I followed all the responses here.  This is a problem for apple and att to fix.  My solution:  Somehow, if I wait, sometimes an hour, sometimes a couple days, there always comes a time when lo and behold, for whatever reason, the "clear all" button is suddenly not greyed out, and I can clear all.  Hopefully, with the next ios 8, all will be solved, along with the iphone 6!

Found another solution to the problem. I see that various people have different fixes and none of the ones posted here helped. Anyway, I had a hunch and it worked so here it is:

- My assumption was that the communication between my carrier and the iphone was glitching somewhere and I needed a way to refresh that.

- I don't have a "custom greeting" set on my phone, and shy of logging in and out of visual voicemail (which I don't know how to do) I thought of recording a custom greeting (Read below if you don't know how).

- I recorded and saved a custom greeting, went back to "deleted messages" and the Clear All was blue again. I had 325 deleted messages so it took about 2 minutes for the phone app to unfreeze (I could exit out but the phone app was stuck on voicemail). I don't find the time or freezing unusual or unfair, there were a lot of lengthy voicemails in there. but they're finally gone!

Setting custom Greeting.

1. Tap the Phone App
2. Tap on "Greeting" in the top left
3. Tap "Custom" at the top
4. Tap "Record", mid-screen on the right and Record your greeting
5. Tap "Save" in the top right
6. Tap "Deleted Messages" at the bottom
7. Clear button should/may be blue again

Funny, I have absolutely same problem

I was unable to delete.. I held the 1 button to dial voicemail and got the message "I'm sorry someone has already entered that mailbox with that password".. I returned to visual voicemail and was then able to delete messages normally.

IPhone .

     "Here's what worked for me. Prior to iOS 7, I would tap Deleted Message at the bottom of the list of voicemails, then tap Clear All in the upper right hand corner. With iOS 7 that button is greyed out. But if I tap one of the deleted messages which opens it for listening or deleting etc, then tap it again to close, the Delete All turns blue and functions properly. Weird!"

That worked for me.

Many thanks. (I know you posted it years ago.) It worked.  what a dumb gliche!  yes -- if CLEAR ALL is greyed out then I just have to tap a deleted message twice and the CLEAR ALL becomes active! 

The post from Hoban     Apr 24, 2014 11:48 AM  worked for me!

I turned off WiFi in Settings.

I called my ATT voicemail "dial 1"

I hit "*" to disconnect (didn't even need to get into the system).

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.1.2