How to select multiple emails and delete on an iPad

First of all, if you use select all, you can then unselect the ones you want to keep. But, no, you cannot select a group of ten consecutive emails. But with the Edit function selecting them one by one is not so hard.

As to whether the Trash option appears at the bottom of the Edit screen - it depends on the mailbox. What mailbox are you trying to delete from?

In a previous version, one could delete bulk emails with an arcane keyboard shortcut; they took that away.

I get why the feature is there: otherwise, countless users would be complaining here that they accidentally deleted their email and can't get it back.

That said, there has to be an easier way.

I'm a little confused, as well. Quite a few emails have accumulated in my several email boxes in Mail.

Mail is read. I press, "Edit," and there's a long list of emails; the only option (in blue) is "Mark All." When I tap that, I have to options, "Flag" and "Mark as Unread." There's no option to select a large amount of emails, unless I select them one by one.

I don't want to choose them one by one. I want to get rid of a bunch all at once. Any way to do this?

I'm kind of surprised I can't do this.

Thank you for all the tips regarding deleting mass emails. I could not complete the removal process until I read your tips. I had turned off my email on my iPad last fall. When I reopened it I had over 2500 emails to clear. All done in about half an hour. Thanks again

This is what is si laborious. I think we are asking for a "shift-select" equivalent- multitouch could serve this purpose if Apple would make it happen.

Also, Mail IOS needs a "sort by" option C'mon Apple!!! Fix this!!

Hello I have a MacPro Book (2013) I can use this feature by selecting the first email you would like to delete, hold down the shift key, then select the last email you would like to delete. This should then high light/select all the other email inbetween. Drag to trash or hold down the control key and click select delete.

Someone please post if you did not know how to do this and this worked for you. This is my first time posting on the boards being able to help. I'm always getting help from this community so it feels good to be able to help.

🙂

This appears to be a frequent question on the web, including myself. Well I'm happy to share with you the answer I found. I tested it May 2014 on the latest IOS and it works great.

I believe this may be be the developers shortcut because it's not an obvious procedure nor does it produce prompts or confirmations. I will add my own tips here and reiterate those of the original poster:

1) make sure you are still holding the "move" button while you unselect the initial email.

2) be PATIENT. Allow the list to build before selecting the Trash or other folder. Hint. The folder links will darken once the OS has finished selecting the files. Another hint. Once your have selected the desired folder, I.e. trash, WAIT. This process will also take a time depending on the number of files but it will work.

The first time I tried this, I crashed the mail app by being impatient and tapping links, etc. during the process.

Good Luck!

"How to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step

by Adrian Segar

Yes, there is a way to delete all your unwanted iPhone/iPad emails from the Mail app in one operation! No more left-swipe:tap Trash for every individual message. No more Edit: tap the single open circle next to every individual message and finally tapping Trash. And you don’t need to jail break your device.

If you leave your iDevice on for a few days and come back to find a few hundred messages on it that you’ve already downloaded elsewhere this trick will save you time and irritation. I didn’t discover the method—it’s far from obvious—but found it on one of many Apple discussion threads bemoaning this irritating hole in Mail functionality.

It works! I present to you this great tip from shashbasharat found on MacRumors (slightly edited for clarity).

How to delete or move ALL emails at once in non-jail broken ipad or iphone

It took me weeks of research to figure out finally how to decode this yet another secretive secret of apple. There is a perfect way of deleting ALL emails at once without jailbreaking your iphone or ipad…and here it is:

>> Open Inbox >> Edit >> Check/select the top message; it will highlight the move button.

>> Press and hold the move button and uncheck the message that you had checked earlier.

>> Lift all your fingers off from the ipad screen and leave it alone. Wait until all your messages pile up on the right hand portion of the screen (in ipad); iphone will give you the actual number of emails it has selected for the action. Now they are just waiting for your command to be moved ALL at once.

>> Choose trash to delete all of them or any other folder where u want to move them, like one piece. Remember this will replicate your action on the server so you will ACTUALLY move them or delete them on the server and not just the ipad.

Once you have moved all messages to the trash you can either leave them there for the scheduled cleaning or empty it right away by doing this: go to trash folder and touch Edit. The Delete All button shows up at the bottom of the screen. Hit it! You’re done!

If you do not see the effects of your actions on the server make sure you have enabled your email accounts for such actions.

Tips:

1. Please give enough time (could take up to several minutes depending the number of emails to be moved) for the emails to be selected for the move. Your screen will become unresponsive while all emails are being packaged. Once emails are ready, in ipad, you will see them zoomed out on the right hand side of the screen, and in iphone you will see the message showing you the actual number of messages that have been selected.

2. Avoid purging very large number of emails, the mail app might freeze or crash. If your inbox has thousands of emails change your sync settings in mail settings to fill lesser number of emails in your inbox"

I have over 3000 old emails in my account and haven't been able to delete them, except individually! This is archaic!

I Must be doing something wrong, this does not work for me. How long do you hold down Move button?

thanks,

mary

I am using IOS 7.0.4 and the trash option does not show up when I try to delete all messages from my inbox.

I have previewed many videos online (and tips that work on my iPhone 5s) but they do NOT work on IOS 7.0.4, the latest update from Apple.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

there is a very effective way to do this and when you see it through, it will be a Eureka moment...you guys ready?

http://http://youtu.be/LbIP6EbndvA

this is a safe link to a youtube video and yes it work on the new OS7 as well. I recently deleited 12,428 emails i had on a runaway yahoo account.

Good luck and enjoy your "Eureka" moment

Savannahstang66

Hi Lpayton333,

Welcome to the joys of answering in Apple Support Communities.

I agree that it feels good to be able to help, so keep it up!

When helping you need to be aware of what device the person is talking about. In this case the question was referring to the iPad, and was posted to the iPad support community. iPads don't work the same way as desktops or laptops in terms of selecting large numbers of things. For one thing there isn't a shift key to hold down.

I hope you will continue to answer questions.

Ok I tried this SO many times on my ipad and it always made MAIL crash. Then I finally hit on the solution (which others hinted at). First I marked all as read. Then the most important thing is: do NOT touch your ipad at all until the mails have piled up on the right and the spinning progress ball goes away on the upper left corner. It will definitely work! But hitting that trash icon prematurely will most likely make MAIL crash, leaving you wanting to throw your ipad out the window.

I have just come across your answer to this problem and have tried it without success. In Edit mode I select the first message, hold down the move button, deselect the first message and then release the move button. Nothing happens apart from a message to select the mailbox for the item to be moved to. However, the screen is frozen at this point and so no selection is possible. Any further advise please

Hey,

Click on edit and then these circles will appear to the left of all mails. Just select the circles of the mails which you want to delete, then click on move which is at the bottom and trash. Woohoo! You just cleared up a ******** of space. Hope this helped.