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shahbasharat

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 15, 2012
2
0
it took me weeks of research to figure out finally how to decode this yet another secretive secrets 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 u will ACTUALLY move them or delete them on the server and not just the ipad.

once you have moved all messages to trash you can either leave them there for the scheduled cleaning or empty it right away by doing this: go to trash folder and click edit. the delete all button shows up at the bottom of the screen. hit it! you r done!

if you do not see 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 upto 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 you inbox
 
Last edited:

harlex

macrumors member
Nov 23, 2011
63
0
Well that we know, but more to a point ever tried deleting an email address that you no longer wish to keep.
 

Beebeez

macrumors newbie
Jul 11, 2012
1
0
Thank you soooo much!

I did this and it worked like a charm. I just wish that apple would give better on-screen instruction so people didn't have to go searching online for the answer, or 'accidently discover' the solution. Thanks again for your excellent research!
 

nayport

macrumors newbie
Sep 29, 2012
1
0
OMG thank you SOOOOOO much!! This worked perfectly - can't tell you how much time this will save me, as I used to manually delete EVERY email! Don't understand why Apple can't make their instructions that easy!!
 

Cloudy5

macrumors newbie
Oct 9, 2012
1
0
I'm sure I am doing something wrong...

...but I can't get this to work on my iPhone 4s. I seem to get lost after the check/uncheck top message. Am I supposed to do it with just one finger because when I try to drag down to the other messages, nothing happens. Any help is appreciated.
 

look-fast

macrumors newbie
May 10, 2013
1
0
move emails w attachments?

thanks for the tip... it works very well.. for all emails without attachments though... is there any way to move those with attachments too pls?


it took me weeks of research to figure out finally how to decode this yet another secretive secrets 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 u will ACTUALLY move them or delete them on the server and not just the ipad.

once you have moved all messages to trash you can either leave them there for the scheduled cleaning or empty it right away by doing this: go to trash folder and click edit. the delete all button shows up at the bottom of the screen. hit it! you r done!

if you do not see 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 upto 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 you inbox
 

Momtopeppy

macrumors newbie
Sep 28, 2013
1
0
How to delete all emails at onceon ipad

This works wonderfully. Thanks so much for your knowledge. I had over 3,000 to get rid of... Worked like a charm..:):):)
 

milknhoney

macrumors newbie
Dec 1, 2013
15
0
not on iphone

Works beautifully on my ipad but not on my iphone. My iphone is ios 6 but my ipad is ios7. Is that the reason?
 

Rich.Cohen

macrumors regular
Oct 28, 2013
193
3
Washington DC
Email Deletes sometimes

This is a great tip, but I have a problem. It works fine on my Wife's iPad 4 but it doesn't work on her iPhone 5s. On the phone the emails look like they were deleted, but then they come back again. Has anyone else seen this? She went to the Apple Store today and they tried a number of things including completely reinstalling her software. Nothing worked. Her service provider is Verizon if that matters. Both devices have the latest version of iOS.

Has anyone else encountered a problem with this?
 

milknhoney

macrumors newbie
Dec 1, 2013
15
0
This is a great tip, but I have a problem. It works fine on my Wife's iPad 4 but it doesn't work on her iPhone 5s. On the phone the emails look like they were deleted, but then they come back again. Has anyone else seen this? She went to the Apple Store today and they tried a number of things including completely reinstalling her software. Nothing worked. Her service provider is Verizon if that matters. Both devices have the latest version of iOS.

Has anyone else encountered a problem with this?

This is exactly what happens on my iphone 5. It works fine on my ipad though, and I have both through Verizon.:confused:
 

paperairplanes

macrumors newbie
May 29, 2014
1
0
can you delete emails on iPhone without deleting from server?

I want to delete ALL my gmail from my iPhone, but not from the server. I would have to go through all my thousands of emails on my Macbook to see which ones I don't want to delete. I have never synced my devices—does this mean I CAN delete from my iPhone without deleting from the server? I can't afford to do it without knowing they won't all disappear on my laptop!
 

Vertagade

macrumors newbie
Jan 2, 2015
1
0
Works great

If you think its not working your probably just not waiting long enough. I was a bit unpatiant myself the first time i tried this but i tried again and it worked. I had 300 mails and it took me about three minuets before it unfroze and let me delete the mail. I guess it takes about a minuet per 100 mails.
 

Mrfatboy

macrumors 6502
Dec 15, 2008
316
6
This is a great tip, but I have a problem. It works fine on my Wife's iPad 4 but it doesn't work on her iPhone 5s. On the phone the emails look like they were deleted, but then they come back again. Has anyone else seen this? She went to the Apple Store today and they tried a number of things including completely reinstalling her software. Nothing worked. Her service provider is Verizon if that matters. Both devices have the latest version of iOS.

Has anyone else encountered a problem with this?

Doesn't work for me either. It looks like it does but doesn't. I have a iPhone 6 plus on 8,1,1 trying this with a gmail account
 

jeanbridge

macrumors newbie
Jan 22, 2015
2
0
What if 1,000s of emails must be deleted?

Hi, I've allowed 1,000s of emails to accumulate on my ipad. I'm afraid to delete all of them at once. Is there a way to select say 100 at a time without having to do it manually each time?
 

J-Bar

macrumors newbie
Jun 1, 2015
1
0
Tried multiple times and it does not seem to work for me. It eventually shows the selected email that I deselected while holding move, I continue to wait for quite some time and eventually the iPad simply exits the email inbox altogether. Any ideas why?
 

Auntie Kaye

macrumors newbie
Sep 18, 2016
1
0
it took me weeks of research to figure out finally how to decode this yet another secretive secrets 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 u will ACTUALLY move them or delete them on the server and not just the ipad.

once you have moved all messages to trash you can either leave them there for the scheduled cleaning or empty it right away by doing this: go to trash folder and click edit. the delete all button shows up at the bottom of the screen. hit it! you r done!

if you do not see 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 upto 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 you inbox
[doublepost=1474226590][/doublepost]Wow, so lucky to have found this and thank you for your detective work! This tip worked perfectly and saved me a huge amount of time. I had an Inbox with I-won't-tell-you-how-many messages in it. I took a chance, even though you warned against moving a large quantity of messages, and it worked perfectly, although it took more than 30 minutes to complete. THANK YOU for posting and for writing clear instructions that could be followed. Color me GRATEFUL!
 
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