iPhone: How to Delete Email
Contributed by iphone_dude 
Tagged: Apple iPhone With all the spam in this world, deleting email is a common part of life. Here I will describe the two different ways of deleting email from your iPhone.
iPhone supports gmail, yahoo mail, .mac, and POP mail systems without any problems. Deleting email from an account can be done as follows:
1. Go into your email on your iPhone
2. Press the Edit icon in the upper right hand corner
3. Press the Red minus key beside the email you wish to delete.
4. Confirm your deletion by pressing the red delete key that appears to the right of the email message.
5. Press the Done icon in the upper right hand corner when finished.
Shortcut:
- You can also make the delete key appear by dragging your finger from left to right across an email as shown in the picture below:
Bulk Delete:
The iPhone does not have bulk delete capabilities. If you find yourself needing to bulk or mass delete emails, you may want to alter how you manage your emails.
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DJones said on November 18, 2008
Is there a way to delete message from the phone but retain them on my computer?
sherry kelley said on November 25, 2008
my email on the Iphone 3G with AOL–I cn no longer send read emails to the trast or delete–I clled Iphone and they told me it was an AOL problem I had to contact AOL–my AOL is filling up with unwanted emails
Jon Warner said on November 30, 2008
Have message:
iPhone cannot delete mail.
Unable to move message the message could not be moved to the mailbox trash.
Please email me the solution
jon@cannonsports.com
Jon Warner said on November 30, 2008
Aol stinks, I’m changing to gmail
Lisa Cassel said on December 4, 2008
When I try to delete mail out of aol acct I get message that it cannot be moved to mailbox trash Help
Mjazz said on December 5, 2008
I’ve been having this same problem for over about a week. I have been able to delete from my MobileMe roadrunner and gmail accounts. Looks like we’ll just have to wait till aol fixes problem or do the inconvenient thing and delete our emails from an actual computer.
Tommie said on December 6, 2008
How can you Sync email with your computer to delete all (91) without doing each separately?
Linda Beeler said on December 8, 2008
I have the I PHone. I try to delete my messages. It repeatedly says “unable to move message to trash bin. How do I correct this. It had been working fine. Please respond to my e-mail address. Thanks.
Linda
Linda Beeler said on December 8, 2008
To Lisa,
Have you figured out a solution about delting your mail. I have the same problem. I get a messageunable to move message.
Linda
Steve said on December 11, 2008
did you ever get an answer?
John Lefebvre said on December 12, 2008
Here is the msg. I receive when I try to delete e-mail.
Unable to move Mesaages
The messages could not be moved to the mailbox trash.
Please help me.
dellis said on December 13, 2008
Is there a way to do a mass delete? A la Blackberry, “delete all?”
John said on December 13, 2008
tried this – worked on one email adress but not another. when this was tried a message was recieved saying ” Unable to Move Message: Message could not be moved to mailbox trash”. What should I do next?
davak said on December 13, 2008
For those having problems, are you using POP or IMAP?
Charlie said on December 15, 2008
Mine too… every since the 2.02 upgrade came out. Did you find a solution???
Nozz said on December 21, 2008
Linda,
I have the same problem. I on AOL & have not been able to use the trash bin facility since downloading the new 2.02 upgrade. Please let me know if you are successful in solving the problem.Thanks
ty said on December 22, 2008
put your iphone in airplane mode then delete msgs
JÕÊŁ Latino said on December 22, 2008
Put ur iPhone in airplane then delete the mail you don’t want and delete them from trash that’s it u got it
ums said on December 22, 2008
I had the same problem with a POP account. I went into the advanced settings for the account (on the iPhone) and re-set the destination for where the deleted items should go on the server.
Arline nechtow said on January 3, 2009
Major problems deleting e-mails while on vacation. Major inconvenience getting to a desk top . Please contact me for discount on bill. Tenan@aol.com
Ac said on January 3, 2009
I put my phone on airplane mode then proceeded with deleting my emails on aol.
Janet Miller said on January 3, 2009
did you ever get a response to this question?
Janet Miller said on January 3, 2009
Did you ever get a response to deleting messages on your iphone but retaining them on the computer?
frances said on January 4, 2009
when you delete e-mail off the computer (yahoo account) does it delete the message on your iphone as well or does it show on your phone still?
anonymous said on January 4, 2009
If you are getting an error message when trying to delete AOL emails from your iPhone after the 2.2 software update, do this: tap Settings > Mail,Contacts,Calenders > (aol account) > Advanced > Deleted Messages. Select “Spam” from the list. Press Home button. Repeat the previous procedure except this time re-select “Trash” from the list. Tap the Home button. You will now be able to delete your AOL emails from the iPhone again.
Ben said on January 5, 2009
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude said on January 8, 2009
Holy Crap!!!!!! Thank You SOOOOOOO much!!!!!!
Carol said on January 14, 2009
Still cannot delete emails – tried everything?
Carol said on January 14, 2009
Worked for me – thanks!!!
donna said on January 17, 2009
i am having the same issue. it is so infuriating I can’t get this to work at all did anyone respond to you>
Mindy said on January 22, 2009
You’re awesome.thanks!!!!!
Iphone Noob said on January 23, 2009
Here is what worked for me…. 1. Open SETTINGS….2. Open MAIL, CONTACTS, CALENDARS…..3. Open you Email Acct……4. Scroll down to ADVANCED and open….5. Open DELETED MAILBOX….(There should be a check mark next to TRASH) 6. Tap on something to uncheck TRASH (like SAVED or SENT ITEMS….I don’t think it matters) Then Tap TRASH so the check mark is next to it again. 7. Press your HOME button to take you back to the Springboard….Now you can open your email and it should delete.
It worked for me……GOOD LUCK
Mike said on January 23, 2009
Hi. My iPhone isn’t allowing me to delete my inbox. A window is popping up saying that the message cannot go in the trash. Can you please help me? Send me the solution please. Thank you.
john said on January 24, 2009
7. Pete Says:
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
I just called Apple support and the following seems to have fixed the problem: Go to settings > mail > click on the email account > advanced > deleted mailbox > then touch the “Trash” box. Nothing appears to happen — though it turns blue momentarily. The check remains. But when I went back into my email account (AOL), this had corrected the problem. I had previously tried to reset the iPhone and that failed to correct the problem
Karen said on January 24, 2009
When I attempt to delete a message I get an error message that says “Unable to Move Message; The message could not be moved to the mailbox trash” . I do not even have a mailbox called trash.
GlenW said on January 25, 2009
What if you have no advanced … Do you have to enable the advanced option ? I am getting the same problem connecting to an Exchange Server … so it may be Exchange connector does not have an Advanced option … was everyone here struggling with only AOL emails.
cliff said on January 25, 2009
Thank you, it worked fine.
Rick Heard said on January 27, 2009
This Totally Works! Thanks, it’s been driving me crazy ever since the upgrade.
Diana said on February 6, 2009
Thank you!!! this worked for me. I couldn’t delet my email forever, now It’s gone.
Gary Moore said on February 8, 2009
Worked for me too On AOL just go to mail top setting and turn on AIRPLANE mode and emails can then be deleted either of two ways…
bryan said on February 27, 2009
yes but how do you delete 99 emails without having to touch each one of them,,,, that is my frustration
David said on March 1, 2009
How do you delete email names?
Erick said on May 5, 2009
did you ever get an answer???
Sal said on May 26, 2009
Tried the above solution but the message ” unable to move message to mailbox trash” comes up.
Please help.
Thanks
Sal said on May 26, 2009
That did it!!
Thanks a bunch.
Steve said on July 10, 2009
still can not delet the email…
John said on August 12, 2009
This method of delelting isn’t very efficient when it comes to over 400 emails.
Is there a way to delete a bunch of them without having to tick one by one?
It takes like 1 second to tick 2 but then you have to check the content to see whether you want to keep or not, im not gonna spend 20 minutes checking and deleting 400 emails. There must be a more efficient way of doing it.
Steffens Thomas G. said on August 28, 2009
WHat about mass deletions. I had to restore my iPhone and somehow got 600 old Emails on. I can’t delete them one by one1!!!
Aneil Mishra said on September 25, 2009
This worked perfectly — thanks so much!
Anonymous said on October 11, 2009
if when trying to delete email you get the “cant place message in trash” messages
put your iphone in airplane mode then delete msgs
Anonymous said on November 2, 2009
Hi,
thank you for the advice.
would you know if there is any way to delete ALL messeges instantly and in one go?
thank you
Siba@compuserve.com
Anonymous said on November 12, 2009
How do I set up my I phone so that when I delete messages from my I phone they are also deleted in my Hotmail. Thanks
Anonymous said on November 12, 2009
Does anyone know how to set up my gmail account so that when I delete a message on my computer it deletes it on my phone, or vice versa? from “tired of deleting twice.”
JordanLevy said on November 13, 2009
Is there any way to bulk delete old emails, I have thousands and their eating up my hd space?
Anonymous said on November 19, 2009
Your a genius!!! It worked. God Bless!!!
Anonymous said on November 24, 2009
I have like 700 unread emails. Thats not true though ive readed all of them but on my iphone they apear unreaded. How do i delete all of them.
Anonymous said on November 30, 2009
When you open mail from Y mail it is different from Yahoo mail…how do you mark the email from Y mail once you open it but you want it to stay that it has not been read? I know how to do it with Yahoo but no Y mail…. please explain.
Anonymous said on December 7, 2009
after we follow the two methods for deleting email as described, the email reappears.
Patricia said on December 22, 2009
i cannot delete emails on my iphone. they revolve back again. i have tried doing this on 3G and wirelessly.
i have a shaw.ca account.
any comments anyone?
Anonymous said on January 12, 2010
I did this but the emails re appear
Anonymous said on February 2, 2010
How do I set up my iphone 3gs to download emails from my pop3 server and when I delete them from my phone they stay on my pop3 server?
Anonymous said on February 2, 2010
I have a question for a friend;
She claims that everytime she opens her Computer and checks emails, they either aren’t sent to the iPhone, or are deleted.
And If she checks them on the iPhone, they’re not sent to the computer or either deleted aswell.
Is it possible to have them sent to both? Is that feature automatic, but she might have disabled something?.. to break it down, its ideal if emails would be sent to both, and not deleted until manually deleted. She needs copies on both iPhone and Computer. Any help would be nice, please reply or email to;
Thank you,
rylan.nordstrom@langleylaw.ca
Daniel said on February 24, 2010
Rylan,
Sounds like she’s using POP3. She’d be much better off using IMAP, if it’s supported by her email provider – or at least changing the POP3 settings on her phone to leave a copy of the email on the server.
If it were me, I’d create a GMail account and sync the iPhone using Google Sync (http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/). If it’s not possible to use Google Sync (the user may already have an Exchange account configured) then they can still use IMAP, which is way better than POP3. You can then configure GMail to retrieve emails from the old email account using POP3, and then label them so that you know they’ve come via the old email address.
Hope that helps.
Daniel
Anonymous said on March 2, 2010
when I delete e-mail on my computer how do I make it delete the same e-mail on my i phone
Anonymous said on March 10, 2010
this is a good way to delete emails, but i also used to hit the garbage can and it would delete an open message. all of a sudden the garbage can doesn’t work anymore – how can i make it work again? help – thanks
Anonymous said on March 10, 2010
i used to be able to delete an open email by hitting the garbage can on the iphone. all of a sudden it stopped doing this when i hit the garbage can. any suggestions as to how i can get this working again? thx
Anonymous said on March 15, 2010
how do i delete my phone number history one by one on my iphone
mark said on March 21, 2010
Exceptional. I just got my iphone and needed to do this. Brilliant!
kristin said on April 1, 2010
I have been unable to delete 2 messages from my inbox from my AOL mail. They even stuck with my after upgrading my iphone…so frustrating. I followed your suggestion and POOF, they are gone. Thank you soooo much!
Anonymous said on April 21, 2010
i delete messages on my iphone and then they come back. as i delete the number just keeps getting higher as they just keep coming back. feel like bruce almighty fgs. how do i permanently delete so they stay away for good.
Anonymous said on May 6, 2010
I had no problem deleteing all my email on my iphone except for two from the same person. it keeps saying not able to move Message The message could not be moved to the mailbox Trash. I believe this is a virus from some Canadian Pharmacy people. I opened the email because it was from my friends name with no subject. When I opened it, it was selling pills. Help me delete this someone.
Jonathan said on June 2, 2010
how do i delete the email on the iphone…but keep it in my mailbox on my cpu?
Belugable said on June 18, 2010
you have to pay for mobile me! hideous, isn’t it
Berninarita said on June 21, 2010
mine will not show a minus sign when I press edit and then select a message. It only shows a checkmark. No delete icon appears
Rweebers said on June 23, 2010
I received some empty messages without a subject. I understand these messages could be poorly written spamm. I would like to ignore these messages and delete them, but I can’t. I can’t open them, or via edit > select message > delete, delete them.
Dragging to delete the file doesn’t help either. Anyone have a suggestion?
Nigel Peacock said on June 28, 2010
Right, I assume as no one has actually answered the bulk delete question it can’t be done?
After Apple messed up my 3GS today by giving me the wrong info about back ups, I have over 4000 emails comning through…
Can they be stopped, can they be mass deleted?
please help me ….
Brenda Slack said on June 29, 2010
I have the same problem on my iphone 4. Emails are dated 12/31/69 and 12/31/00. When I hit edit, there is no circle to mark to delete. HELP!
john said on July 10, 2010
Did you ever get this resolved?? I am getting the same thing!
guest1 said on July 12, 2010
Hi guys, I dont know wht type of iphone u have but if you go to
settings
-mail,contacts…
-accounts (select ur email)
-go all the way down to advanced
-delete from server… there u choose.
=)
Vclayton5 said on July 14, 2010
I have more than 786 emails on my iphone. I have synced it but they still don’t get deleted. I do not have that many on my computer so why do they stay on my iphone and how do I get them deleted without having to do it one at a time?
Darren said on July 18, 2010
I have the new iPhone 4 and now have 6 or so messages that say
“(No Sender), (No Subject), This message has no content…”
and when i press edit, no little circle shows up to delete them..Plus when I slide my finger acroos nothing and there still there? WTF???
DM, Ojai CA
Darren said on July 18, 2010
same with me same two dates and I can’t delet them!
Jeff said on July 25, 2010
Same here. I turn the phone off, and when I turn it back on the mails are gone. iphone 3GS after update to ios4. None the last 3 days or so.
Jeff said on July 25, 2010
Same here after update 3GS to ios4.
Cayce311 said on July 26, 2010
Has anyone from the iPhone people addressed this problem?
I have messages that have no content no subject and will not delete. What do we do?
1993 said on July 26, 2010
My email does not have a red minus key – now what?
Michael said on July 27, 2010
I have this problem too! Have yo fixed it yet?
Michael said on July 27, 2010
Just managed to fix it. When I was closing down mail, it was still running in the background. If you competely shut down mail either using SBsettings or shutting down your phone, and restart it, the message does not even appear.
Michael said on August 1, 2010
I just signed up for a Gmail account and it turns out that when I delete an email from my iPhone it removes it from my Gmail account. When I did this with my COmcast account it left the emails on Comcast. Is there a setting to help me with this ?
Rita Norton1 said on August 5, 2010
My iphone will not let me delete instead it says archive
Anonymous said on August 5, 2010
Rita: This should help…
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/6136/iphoneipod-...
Dbblaw said on August 6, 2010
Withe a pop account I get the message Unable to move messages. “The message could not be moved to the mailbox trash”
Any ideas?
Misha said on August 6, 2010
i talked to tech support forever with no solution. BUT then i played around and succeeded. i have a 3GS and a pop account. go to settings – mail – choose account – advanced – deleted mailbox – click on trash
problem solved!
Judi Gomez said on August 13, 2010
how do i delete the email on the iphone…but keep it in my mailbox on my cpu … POP3 settings on her phone to leave a copy of the email on the server. …
Roger said on August 22, 2010
TY..That was great I appreciate the info
Richard said on August 31, 2010
did like you said and it says unable to move msg. whats the problem
Sgjones said on September 14, 2010
How can i delete the email from my iphone 4 and it still remain on my computer at work?
jdouglas said on September 29, 2010
Is there a way to delete bulk e-mail, in the bulk mail folder, with out checking off each individual e-mail and then deleting. Several hundred a day makes it rather arduous
David Kirk - Founder/Editor said on September 30, 2010
If you are deleting several hundred a day, you might be better served by readjusting how you manage your email in general. Here are my thoughts on the topic:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/8196/how-do-i-bulk-delete-emails-from-the-iphone/
deleting emails said on October 13, 2010
I’m having a similar issue before. Whenever I try to delete emails in my hotmail, the screen will turn black and returns to the icon window. and when i checked, the emails I tried to delete are still there. i also tried to do it one by one but still it didn’t work. so what i did was checked the settings, checked (mail,contacts,calendar), then my account, then advanced and finally deleted mailbox. the trash check box was checked by default, so I tried to uncheck it. then tried to check it again…and this seemed to fix the glitch.
Gina said on October 16, 2010
The DELETE icon changed to an ARCHIVE icon. Where is the ability to DELETE? If I click this button or swipe the message for delete it stays in my email and later I have to DELETE it AGAIN from my computer. I am using GMail Apps.
Rstoky said on November 30, 2010
I have this problem for the first time. Amazingly it only showed upon my G4 i-Phone. It did not show up on my i-Pad or on my gmail on my computer. Any help?
smurph said on December 6, 2010
Gina – I believe qdideas suggested a solution to your issue:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/6136/iphoneipod-touch-ios4-how-to-delete-gmail-messages-instead-of-just-archiving-them/
Anonymous said on January 24, 2011
Jonathon – did you ever figure this out? Just got an iPhone, deleted some emails and the disappeared from my MacBook.
Philipdahl said on January 29, 2011
and turn off archive
JJ said on February 16, 2011
Thank you! I also discovered that I had set up an IMAP acct and that my email server doesnt support that. As soon as I deleted the IMAP, I was able to delete.
Gltrprinczz said on February 17, 2011
How can you erase an email that I never used that I accidently typed in. It keeps popping up?
Ludie said on March 6, 2011
you are the man!!!1 works a treat
DeniseyarboughSmithh said on March 14, 2011
I never use the computer anymore. Is there a way to delete my hotmail messages that are on the computer from my phone? For example I delete a message using the mail app that came with the phone, but then when I get on the computer. I see the same message still in my inbox unread. I worry that because I don’t get on the computer often enough that my hotmail account is going to fill up.
david said on April 9, 2011
This is very helpful. Guys what i learned here is that you just delete the Bulk Mail folder. This is very smart move.
David
Thanhnguyentan said on April 26, 2011
I accidentally deleted an important voice memo, how can I recover it again?
Thanhnguyentan said on April 26, 2011
in iphone 4, I accidentally deleted an important voice memo, how can I recover it again?
Michelle said on November 6, 2011
Is there a way to delete message from the iphone but retain them on my computer?