How to delete all emails on iPhone

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?

Gandalf47 wrote:

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?

I don't think that welafever's answer posted 6 months ago was snarky, and I don't think it was intended to be. The original question did not say how many emails needed to be deleted. If it was 10, or even 100, that would be an effective way and would have given the user a chance to review what they were deleting. If you read more of the 7 page thread you will find suggestions for dealing with larger numbers of emails that need mass deletion. By far the easiest way is to log in to the email provider's webmail portal, or use the mail client on a computer. Either will have a "select all" option along with a Delete All. There's also a method that takes advantage of a "quirk" in the iOS mail program to move all mail to the Trash, which is essentially the same as deleting it. This last is described in the 3rd "Helpful" post at the top of page 1.

Yet another option is to get a mail client from the App Store that has more features than the built-in mail app. Most of Apple's built in apps are rather basic; intentionally, I think, so as not to compete with 3rd party developers. I don't use most of the built-ins; I have App Store sourced calculators, calendar app (the built-in is really awful), clock app, mail apps, weather app, stocks app, Notes app, currency conversion app, voice recorder, browsers, and many more (260 3rd party apps total).

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.

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.

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.

Again, snark. There are legitimate reasons that I accumulated over 1000 on my phone, but to you, it's black or white - either my emails are up-to-date, or I am not "taking responsibility". I don't owe you an explanation as to why, but my request was legitimate, and I solved it here, with a couple of snarky detours along the way.

I have always found this forum to be helpful, so if you can't be helpful, why not go post somewhere else?

I'm just saying ....

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.

Hi

This is a great trick and it works.

Go to your e mails

Select Edit

Select/highlight one email

press move and while KEEPING your finger on 'move' un highlight the selected e mail

Select the trash button and BOOM they are gone!

Good luck

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!!!

If you read some of the thread there are posted workarounds for Delete All.

If you are using the Outlook app and not Apple's email app you should have a delete all option in the app. If not, you need to take that up with Microsoft, who wrote the app.

Another option is to use your email provider's webmail interface and delete them there.

you can delete an specific tread by searching for it, once you get them all click on the top one that will open that email(keyboard will disappears) touch all or the mailbox you are in (top left corner) that will bring you to the emails matching your search after that touch edit the will show the circles on the left side of all the messages select the top one ( circle) now you have at the bottom -----mark (1) move (1) trash(1) cancel ----- touch and HOLD move while pressing move deselect the message previously selected ( a move patch will show in the middle of the screen and the number from 1 to no number) let go of move and that will bring you to a multiple choice page where you can select all those messages to go ( just note the number of messages under the title, that is how many you are moving to trash, junk or whatever you select))