can we delete all email?

Let's say I'm reading on my email on my Mac. I go through like 30 or 40 messages. Then I fire up the iPhone and of course there are all the emails that I've just read. Is there a way to delete all the messages rather than going through them and deleting one by one? Thanks.

use imap if your email client supports it. when you read or delete a message it will mark it as read or delete it for every device using the imap address. if your client doesnt support it then i think your stuck manually deleting them.

If you don't have an account that supports IMAP, what you can do, if you haven't already, is add the account to Mail.app and then check your mail with that. When you sync your iPhone, whatever you did with the messages in Mail will be reflected on the iPhone, and vice versa.

Though of course IMAP is the best way to go.

I think that is one of the worst over sights that is on the iPhone. That and cut and paste.

Thanks guys all good suggestions but unfortunately my mail doesn't support imap and I don't sync all that often. I guess I'm stuck going through them and deleting one by one. Hopefully this will be addressed in an update.

Kash said:

If you don't have an account that supports IMAP, what you can do, if you haven't already, is add the account to Mail.app and then check your mail with that. When you sync your iPhone, whatever you did with the messages in Mail will be reflected on the iPhone, and vice versa.

Click to expand...

Mine doesn't. When I sync, it doesn't change my messages or delete them with my POP accounts.... ?

husky123 said:

Thanks guys all good suggestions but unfortunately my mail doesn't support imap and I don't sync all that often. I guess I'm stuck going through them and deleting one by one. Hopefully this will be addressed in an update.

Click to expand...

Here's a suggestion:
Set up a Gmail account, tell Gmail to collect your email from your current provider via POP3 and then set up the "send email via this address by default" feature that lets you send email through gmail using another email address - in this case your current address with your old provider.

So Gmail would pick up your email via POP3, sync it to your iPhone / Mac via IMAP, you'd send emails with your same address, so no new address to tell everyone about and you get the benefits of GMail's spam filtering and IMAP.

I have a gmail account, and I am very confused as to how to set up iMap with my phone. I cant even find it anywhere. I just spent the last 5 mins looking.

[Edit] Ok now I really cant find it. I looked on gmail, the phone, on my computer. Once again mac forums, you brought to my attention cool and helpful features that I do not have...

First you need to enable IMAP on your Gmail account. Log into Gmail and click on Settings. Then go to the POP3/IMAP tab and make sure IMAP is enabled.

Now click on the Configuration options link at the bottom and follow the directions to setup IMAP Gmail on your iPhone.

Email Delete

I have to agree. This so unproductive. I do not want to do IMAP becasue I want them deleted from my phone, not my laptop.

Blackberry made it so easy to do. Iphone makes it so unproductive. I get hundreds of emails a day.

I called support and they said to have everyone put in a complaint/request at Apple - iPhone - Feedback

KayMyPreciosKid said:

I have to agree. This so unproductive.

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1. You know you're responding to a thread from two years ago, right?

2. iPhone software 2.0, which came out in July 2008, gave us batch delete.

Good grief. This thread is over 4 years old. I'm new to this mostly fantastic iPhone 4 and quite shocked that you can't 'Mark All' and/or 'Delete All' and/or 'Delete Marked' email.

Chas_m if you're still out there, where is this batch delete? (I trust you're not referring to having to point and click on every email message that you want to delete? That's terrible if you're sending and receiving a large volume of messages each day)

Cheers.

See if this helps. Not tried it yet myself.

Apple Tech Blog: TIP: iPhone Email Batch Delete

dtravis7, thanks for your time. But no... that (new) process simply means that instead of Swipe/Delete, you now get little radio buttons to the left of each message. You have to run down the list and press that button beside every email you want to delete.

Since getting the iPhone last week I've been trying to keep up with maintenance. But given the volume of email I deal with, plus spam that gets through, it's torturous. This morning I went through every email this way. Right now I look and it says I have 56 new messages. I get queasy just thinking of having to it all over again. I'm spending most of my time doing this!

I nearly got VERY queasy when I noticed they sat in Trash after deleting, but (thank you, Apple) you can at least set the Trash to automatically clear out email after one day. LOTS of emails in that trash bin. But better than having to do the arduous process twice.

I cannot for the life of me understand why there isn't a simple Mark All, or Delete All, or Delete Marked.

It's similar to double-clicking the Home button, and not being able to Close All apps. I have to sit there and poke vibrating, little red dots. Sometimes I get them.

The surprising part is that there is clearly SO much thought and brilliance that's gone into the design and manufacture of this device. It's difficult to understand oversights like these... scouring the web shows that the frustration's not new. The issues keep coming up time and again.

Saw that after I tried it. Will keep looking in case there is something I am missing.

For now at least it's to me anyway better than swiping each message!

Kash said:

If you don't have an account that supports IMAP, what you can do, if you haven't already, is add the account to Mail.app and then check your mail with that. When you sync your iPhone, whatever you did with the messages in Mail will be reflected on the iPhone, and vice versa.

Click to expand...

Um, no. Not unless the account in question is IMAP.

What program you check your mail in has nothing to do with it, it's all about POP or IMAP. POP requires manual handling because its designed for you to be checking your email on one machine. You can *set* a POP account to delete mail from the server once its downloaded to one of your specific email-checking devices, but that's as far as you can go with it.

IMAP keeps all mail on the server and just "marks" it as appropriate once you've done something to it on any machine that checks the account. Thus, the other machines don't "see" read mail as unread, et al.

This is why IMAP rules. If your own provider doesn't use IMAP, seek one that does -- or forward your POP mail to an IMAP account like Mobile Me or GMail.

dtravis7 said:

Will keep looking in case there is something I am missing.

Click to expand...

I'd be forever grateful. Thanks.

chas_m we work with several accounts here and not all are suitable for IMAP.

can we delete all email? ARRRRRRRRRRGH

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese. I do not want to jailbreak my phone. But this is crazymaking.

We cannot switch all email accounts to IMAP. As such, and with numerous accounts and incoming SPAM, we invariably look down to see >100 emails to delete.

Often, one does not have the time to sit there and click, click, click, click, scroll, click, click, click, scroll... etc. etc. more than 100 times. That's when h*ll sets in. Because if you leave it, the next time you look down you have 200 emails to delete. Now for SURE no-one has time to do that! So you know what that means... yup, now there are 300.

Today I have a pretty busy day but nearly 1,000 emails to delete from my phone. It'll be easier to go through the time/inconvenience of deleting all email accounts and rebuilding them again!

What I also found interesting was when the fellow at Apple support mentioned a little-known method of deleting all emails at once. Forgotten now, but it was something like Edit > click an email > hold down the check mark > all emails would be selected. But I can't do on mine, and he found he couldn't anymore either. What's that all about?

Maybe if I understood the reasoning behind this omission. Again, when you see other similar things like the inability to 'Quit All' apps running (and then have to sit there again click, click, click, click, click...) it starts to feel like somebody does not want me to work quickly and efficiently.

The aforementioned Apple support technician explained that Apple does this sort of thing to "protect the user from unintentionally losing or damaging data". Huh? The irony is that there ARE places where one can Select All or Mark All items. ALSO, if this were true, then I would not be able to Select All text in a document. I'm ready to be accountable for my errors. (BTW, add a confirmation dialog box if you're that worried)

Maybe this is a new thread, but this is probably a bigger deal to me than others because we're new to Apple and have been considering switching all systems away from PC. I've always loved and been in awe of the look of the interface. I do understand and appreciate taking a position based on what you think is good for a user, but taken to extremes this (and other issues mentioned elsewhere) simply start to feel very much like unnecessary totalitarian crap.

Just a bit depressing. I was wanting this to be the cool intuitive interface that it clearly has the potential to be.

Delete old e mails

After reading all the responses, and trying everything (no, there is no answer on the I-Phone), I figured out how to do it!
The answer lies in erasing all the old e-mails IN YOUR SERVER, then syncing your phone.
I went into Google, found out how to batch (yes, it does it) erase all 6,200 old e-mails. Then I re synched my I-Phone.
Voila! only 12 e-mails! It took 5 minutes.
The answer lies in erasing them off your e-mail service provider and re synching!

Thanks, Bell123. Is that an IMAP account? The method doesn't work on POP3 accounts.

Nearly all of our business and personal accounts don't go through Google either.