How to delete all emails on iPhone

Had the same issue with my wife's emails and the only way they permanently disappeared was when she got a new iPad. Seems ridiculous that a major IT company can not have a Delete All function. They have seriously lost the plot wiht customer service

charliefromkellyville wrote:

The Devs appear to change their minds at every release.

This is not a case of the Devs changing their mind. It has worked this way for every version of iOS since the iPhone first appeared in June, 2007.

And the Devs make ZERO decisions. They implement exactly what they are told to implement, and their orders come from teams of UX designers, Systems Analysts, Marketing, and the whims of the CEO.

This truck used to work but not any more with iOS 11.2.6, apparently. "Trash" is no longer one of the choices to move the selected messages to. Someone at Apple really doesn't want iPad users to batch-delete email messages. Bizarre and annoying.

Thank you for letting us know that you were able to recover your Trash folder. This should help others with the same problem. By the way, I agree with you that it's too bad we have to use this trick to enable mass deletions. Oh well. At least we have this option. Still, for people who don't know, I feel for them.

Thinking aloud here, I have to wonder why Apple doesn't fix this. I mean, surely there must be Apple employees at their office who would like the option to delete all email in their inbox.

On a related matter, of the two different email accounts that I have on my iPhone, one of them has a "Trash" folder in addition to "Trash" on its own. I have no idea why a "Trash" folder is needed; if it's needed. I tried deleting it, but it produced an error message stating I couldn't delete it from the server.

Regarding the paragraph above, I really don't have a question to be answered ... just thinking aloud about it.

When you have 1007 emails due to an illness and an inability to delete in real time, a less snarky answer would be preferred, at least by me. Like the one below, which actually works. While your answer is technically correct, if you are not open to anything but the commonly-known solutions, you'll stay one step behind. Glitch or not, the one below works in one second.

If you did not mean it in a snarky way, I am sorry i took it that way, but the question implied that they wanted to delete all there mails at once. Why else would we end up here?

Lawrence, thank you for taking the time to explain what welfever intended to say.

First, I acknowledged the possibility that he might not be acting snarky and apologized if he wasn't, and no further input was required. However, the question suggested that they wanted to "delete all emails in iOS 11 on Iphone at once". I also suggested that if the person only wanted to remove a limited number, why would they reach out to this forum if the answer is readily available by a simple Google search. I only come here when the obvious stuff doesn't work. A simplistic answer such as the one given read to me as condescending. That's my opinion. I could be wrong. I already apologized if I am wrong, so let's leave it at that. Most of the other answers were attempting to be helpful, and I got my problem solved, which is the intent of this forum.

Second, if you read my entire comment, I DID read the entire thread, used a workaround that was suggested that moved all 1007 unwanted emails to the Trash, where I permanently deleted all of them.

Third, I wasn't asking for advice on which mail app to use. The default app is fine for me, and meets my needs. I would ask you why you use an iPhone if you don't like it's software, but that would be inviting a response from you, and that is not what I intend, so disregard the question.

Finally, I came here to get a solution to an uncommon problem for me. I think the forum curators agreed that that answer was not useful, as it was positioned ABOVE the "Helpful Answers" section. I made an observation, then solved my problem with an actual useful answer which followed. Problem solved in one second instead of and hour or two of tapping my screen over 1000 times as suggested by welfever. But thanks for the input, requested or not.

MrGlennOTF wrote:

Wow! I shudder to think about how long it took you, or someone else, to find that! Maybe an insider leaked it out! Anyway, c'mon, Apple. Fix this! Oh, unless you trying to "help" us purchase iPhones with greater storage capacities.

Here's a radical thought. Manage your mailbox so it doesn't accumulate thousands of unwanted or needed email. Apple is not likely ever going to bring back a delete all function as it caused SO many issues with people accidentally deleting all their email. So take some responsibility for managing your inbox and you won't need to buy a phone with more storage. Like that's Apple's end-game to begin with.

Just as you say to start managing one’s inbox, I say the same about people who can’t manage a delete all option. Why is it that the people who can’t manage the delete all option get their way? Apple should still have the delete all option for any of the email boxes.

This is about the third time you have made a similar comment in this thread so I thought I might enlighten you:

I use Thunderbird (originally the Netscape mail client) on a 15" MacBook Pro and a POP3 server. I manage the Thunderbird inbox as you suggest but since I get email alerts from the three daily newspapers to which I subscribe, I don't always delete them immediately. I also use a MacBook Air when I travel. I could set the Thunderbird to delete all emails from the POP3 server when they are downloaded but then they would not be available to the MacBook Air or to my iPhone, so the server setting is "after 3 days or when I delete". I do not use the iPhone mail app as my principal mail client but I like to check my mail when I am away from home for some time to see if there is anything important that I need to respond to at once. As soon as I do that, it downloads all emails on the POP3 server that are less than 3 days old and undeleted. I probably only look at the last 5 at most, and the rest of them just accumulate until I have an hour or two to delete them one by one from my iPhone. I am therefore very grateful to myndlis for the workaround.

I am aware that I could (1) use IMAP or webmail or (2) set Thunderbird to delete from server immediately on download or (3) install a 3rd party mail app on my iPhone but the first two would disrupt my work pattern, not to mention having to retain an email client that I could use to view my archived emails which date back to 1995

This is one of several reasons that my next phone will not be an Iphone. I do not remember the completely counter-intuitive method for removing e-mail and it changes almost every time I do it. The process just this last time was different from any time before and did not conform to the instructions posted here. *** can't we have a single button single button solution. I do not have time to screw around with this sort of crap Android next definitely.

You should always get the product that best meets your needs. Perhaps you should verify that Android does what you want before you buy, however. You might want to read this from ZD Net: I asked Apple for all my data. Here's what was sent back | ZDNet

Note in particular what personal data Android steals from you vs what Apple collects.

This is horrible Apple. How in the world did you think it was a good idea to take away the Delete All option. Hey Apple, have you ever heard of the term “SPAM”, or UNWANTED EMAIL?

The server sent me 2. - 3 weeks of back emails - and now I can’t get rid of them unless I click on the button for each one. ****, even the Microsoft DOS mail system I was using in 1989 (just before I switched permanently to Apple) had a Delete All feature.

Steve Jobs is probably turning over in his grave with this screw up, and Apple’s now apparent disinterest in being a great computer company any more. If Steve was alive he’d junk all the current MacBooks and simplify the choices while bringing the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro into something great again. I have a MacBook Air I purchased in June 2013, and have wanted to purchase a new one since 2015 (and again in 2016, 2017, and this June 2018) BUT Apple you keep delivering laptops that are crap, far behind other brands running Windows. Hey Apple, if you’re ONLY going to be a phone, watch, headphone and pad company, get honest with your longtime loyal customers and just say so. I’m running out of patience with the Apple top management (CEO) product development decisions - Apple needs a CEO with this thing called “vision”.

Fix the Mail current inability to Delete All.

Start designing and selling GREAT laptops again.

Get RID of things we consumers DON’T WANT like that stupid bar on some laptops you actually charge extra for.

Wake up Apple before you run off your loyal customer base.

Just got a new (and first) iPhone. Besides needing to go to computer school to learn how to use it, when I loaded to Outlook app, it uploaded 24,000 emails from the email server online. Needless to say deleting one email at a time is out of the question.

So yes, PLEASE bring back the DELETE ALL button!!!

Hi how do I delete specific mail permanently so that receiver’s can’t see it again? I had sent some documents to my colleague due to some emergency but now it doesn’t seem right so I want to delete mail for everyone. Help me please thank you

Oh my god it really worked 👌thank you very much. This saved me like 2 hours 1247 emails. I was able to mark all as read within seconds. Apple please add this as an official feature.