Deleted emails keep reappearing

Question

Deleted emails keep reappearing

I have a pop3 email account. I manually fetch emails from my PC and from my iPhone. I want all emails to eventually get loaded into Thunderbird on my PC so my settings are (a) when the PC pulls down email they are deleted from the server and (b) when the iPhone pulls down email they are not deleted from the server.

If I (a) delete all emails from my iPhone and close mail on the iPhone and then (b) pull down emails from via my PC which deletes them from the server (which I can confirm does happen as the server mailbox is empty when I login via a web email client) and then (c) reopen mail on my iPhone then the mails I deleted in step a reappear.

Why is it so?

Patrick

iPhone 5c, iOS 9.3.5

Posted on Sep 22, 2016 4:47 PM

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Answer 1

ShagCA

Level 5

6,365 points

Sep 22, 2016 4:53 PM in response to patrick_kelly

patrick_kelly wrote:

(c) reopen mail on my iPhone then the mails I deleted in step a reappear.

Why is it so?

Where does the deleted email appear? If it appears in the Deleted folder, it's normal. That's because your iPhone has its own copy of the email stored in your device storage.

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Answer 2

Sep 22, 2016 4:55 PM in response to ShagCA

They reappear in the inbox.

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Answer 3

ShagCA

Level 5

6,365 points

Sep 22, 2016 5:01 PM in response to patrick_kelly

Where did they go after you do the following and before using the computer to remove them from the mailbox?

(a) delete all emails from my iPhone and close mail on the iPhone

They should all go into the Deleted folder.

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Answer 4

Sep 22, 2016 5:04 PM in response to ShagCA

In step a they did get moved into the rubbish bin. And I deleted them from there as well. So at the end of step a I thought that my iPhone mail app would contain zero emails in both inbox and rubbish. But after following step b to pull them down to PC which deleted them from the server and then reopening mail on iPhone I have a iPhone mail app full of mail. Where did those old deleted emails come from?

Regards - Patrick

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Answer 5

ShagCA

Level 5

6,365 points

Sep 22, 2016 5:07 PM in response to patrick_kelly

Sounds like a bug on the Mail app. It should contain nothing after you clear them all up from Inbox and Deleted folder. Remove the POP3 account and add it back in. See if that resolves the problem.

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Answer 6

Sep 22, 2016 5:12 PM in response to ShagCA

I also think it is a bug. And the bug manifests itself if you close the mail app on the iphone in step a. If you do not close the mail app in step a then the stuff you deleted seems to stay deleted.

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