Delete all email in Inbox iOS7

Doesn't work for me - it moves all the emails to the trash, but they don't appear in there. Initially the inbox is "empty", but the mail app icon is still flagging over 1500 unread emails (even though I previously marked them all as read). A few minutes later they all pop up again in the inbox.

I've been banging on since the first model iPhone for this feature to be included.

Code Red -- the mail reappearing happened to me as well. I seem to remember the following solution to THIS issue (related to but not same as the main issue being kicked around here). I think the procedure was to first go to your online mail server and delete all mail residing there. Then go back to your device and mark all mail showing on the device as read. Then scroll down to the last email and don't do anything for an hour or so. Then mark select all and move to trash. You may have to repeat this a time or two, but it did finally eliminate that portion of the issue. At one point I had over 17,000 emails that kept reappearing. Hope this helps.

Still no solution for me to the original problem.

God luck!

After writing that the procedure worked, I found the same thing that Code_Red found: It deletes the messages but they don't appear in the Trash; they still show as being present in the Inbox (by a number next to "Inbox" on the Mailboxes screen) and then they re-appear in the Inbox!

I must repeat, though, that the User Guide specifically says that there should be an option to delete all. To wit, in Chapter 6, under the heading "Work with multiple messages" it says:

"Delete, move, or mark multiple messages. While viewing a list of messages, tap Edit. Select some messages or tap Mark All, then choose an action. If you make a mistake, shake iPhone immediately to undo."

I'd say Apple has made a mistake; maybe if we shake them immediately they'll undo it :-)

I repeat. Try it again carefullu. ALL MY MAIL IS GONE!

I have also experienced the phenomenon where the mail appears to be deleted, then returns. Like the deletion of the email in the first place, it is fairly random.

I have tried everything on my iPhone 5 and iPad 3 to no avail.

Quickest way to delete the whole lot of messages and empty them from the trash is actually very simple and takes less than a minute for each account.

Simply delete the account, turn device off and on to make sure the account has really gone then set up the account again.

Hope this helps, I emptied thousands of emails from 3 accounts in a couple of minutes.

That will only work if your email account is set to delete mails from the server when they're read - I don't do that, as I don't want to lose all my work emails if my computer crashes for example. This means if I delete the account and set it up again it loads up every email I haven't deleted and it's worse than before!!!

Good tip for some, though. Still doesn't excuse Apple for not fixing this very basic feature... 😐

Quite true, as I said in another thread. Yet another reason to set up Time Machine so you don't have to worry about such issues. If you had a total system crash, you can get all your mail back.

I am one if the many that upgraded to Mavericks only to find it doesn't work with half of my expensive 3rd party software. A few clicks (and a few hours) and I am back to exactly where I was before I made the fatal mistake.

I guess you can't have it both ways. Either you retrieve all your messages (you can usually set the time span to keep them for) or loose them on your mobile device. They remain on your Mac.

Found this very frustrating but on the latest ipad the consistent way I found to do this was

From inbox edit

Mark all as read

Highlight first email

Hold move button

Try to unhighlight first email (probably won't )

Still holding move button pull down on mails and then try to unhighlight first email again

This time it should

You will notice the inbox seems frozen as move is no longer highlighted and individual emails will not highlight if you touch them

Wait May take a minute or two depending on how many emails are in your inbox but they will move to the right side

Then just touch trash

Works every time for me

Hello MSDSC.

I had the same problem, but kept trying things. I found that if I marked all the messages as "read" first, and then used the technique it worked.

....hope this helps!

I think you have something here, this seems to work:

From each Inbox...

Tap Edit

Select first email, adds dot

Hold Move

Drag down on email list

Deselect first email

Release Move

Wait a while

Drop into Trash

Yep works here as well.

Thx...

Maybe it's because I have an iPhone 4, but none of these tricks works on my phone.

This does work. YOU MUST MARK ALL AS READ FIRST. That is the trick.

You don't have to delete all emails on my iPad, but perhaps the iPhone is different.

So the revised script would be:

From each Inbox...

[on iPhone first tap Edit, Mark All Read]

Tap Edit

Select first email, adds dot

Hold Move

Drag down on email list

Deselect first email

Release Move

Wait a while

Drop into Trash