How to Delete an Email from iPhone Mail

Co-authored by Jack Lloyd

Last Updated: November 4, 2021 Tested

This wikiHow teaches you how to delete individual email messages from your iPhone's Mail app, as well as how to delete multiple emails at once. You can also delete the emails permanently by emptying an email account's "Trash" folder, or you can remove an email account entirely.

Method 1

Method 1 of 4:
Deleting an Individual Email

1
Open Mail. Tap the Mail app icon, which resembles a white envelope on a light-blue background.
2
Find an email message. Locate the email message you'd like to delete.
- If Mail opens to an email that you don't want to delete, tap the "Back" button in the top-left corner of the screen to view a list of emails in that folder.
- When in an email folder (e.g., "Inbox"), you can tap the "Back" button in the top-left corner of the screen to move back to the "Mailboxes" view where you can see all of your email folders.
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3
Swipe over the email from right to left. Use one finger to swipe from the right side of the message to the left until a series of buttons appears on the right side of the screen.
- If you can't get this to work, just tap the email to open it and then tap the trash can icon at the bottom of the screen.
4
Tap Delete. It's the red button on the right side of the screen. Doing so removes the email from its current location and places it in the "Trash" folder.
- Skip this step if you opened the email to delete it.
- Sometimes this option will have a number in parentheses (e.g., (2)) instead of the word "Delete".
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Method 2

Method 2 of 4:
Deleting Multiple Emails

1
Open Mail. Tap the Mail app icon, which resembles a white envelope on a light-blue background.
2
Make sure that you're on the "Mailboxes" page. Tap the "Back" button in the top-left corner of the screen until you see the "Mailboxes" heading at the top of the screen.
3
Open an email folder. Find a folder that contains the emails that you want to delete, then tap it to open it.
- If you want to mass-delete emails from a Gmail account in Mail, you'll have to do it from the All Mail folder. You can add mail to this folder from the inbox by tapping the Inbox folder, tapping Edit, checking each email that you want to move, and tapping Archive in the bottom-right corner.
4
Tap Edit. It's in the upper-right corner of the screen. You'll see a circle appear to the left of each email on the screen.
5
Select email messages. Tap each email message that you want to delete. A checkmark will appear in the circle to the left of selected emails.
6
Tap Trash. It's in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The selected emails will be removed from the current folder and moved into the "Trash" folder.

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Method 3

Method 3 of 4:
Permanently Deleting Emails

1
Open Mail. Tap the Mail app icon, which resembles a white envelope on a light-blue background.
2
Make sure that you're on the "Mailboxes" page. Tap the "Back" button in the top-left corner of the screen until you see the "Mailboxes" heading at the top of the screen.
3
Find the right "Trash" folder. If you have more than one email account listed in your iPhone's Mail app, find the account heading (e.g., "ICLOUD") for the account for which you want to empty the trash.
4
Tap Trash. It should be below the account heading. Doing so opens the Trash folder.
5
Tap Edit. It's in the upper-right corner of the screen.
6
Select email messages. Tap each email that you want to select. You should see a checkmark appear next to each tapped message.
- To permanently delete all email messages in the folder, tap Delete All in the lower-right corner before selecting any individual email messages.
7
Tap Delete. It's in the lower-right corner of the screen. The selected emails will be removed from your iPhone.

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Method 4

Method 4 of 4:
Deleting an Email Account

1
Open Settings
. Tap the grey Settings app icon, which has gear icons on it.
2
Scroll down and tap Accounts & Passwords. It's about a third of the way down the page.
3
Select an account. Tap the account that you want to remove from the Mail app.
4
Tap the green "Mail" switch
. It's to the right of the "Mail" heading. The switch will turn white
, signifying that the Mail app will no longer display emails for this account.
5
Delete the account. If you don't want the account on your iPhone at all, scroll down and tap Delete Account at the bottom of the page, then tap Delete from My iPhone when prompted. This will remove from your iPhone any email accounts, contacts, calendars, notes, and other information associated with this account.

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Community Q&A

Question

My emails keep returning after deletion. The message states that they have not been downloaded from the server. I have deleted these messages from every account but the one on my phone. What can I do?

Community Answer

I had a similar experience. I removed the account from my iPhone, then reinstated it. This worked.
Question

What do I do if I have deleted all email, but my phone still lists the same number of emails?

Community Answer

Log out of iCloud and back in. Go to Settings>General>Mail>iCloud>log out.
Question

All I have is an inbox. How do I get trash or junk mail box options?

Community Answer

When you're in the inbox, go back (top right corner of screen) to the main Mail page. Scroll down until you find your account, (it will most likely have a logo beside it) and then tap on it . You should see all your different mail options (Inbox, trash, sent, etc).
Question

What can I do if I don't have the trash option in my email?

Community Answer

If you are using the in-built iPhone mail app, there should be an Archive or Delete option. If you cannot find it, try sliding your finger to the left over the email you want to delete.
Question

How do I get my emails back if I deleted the Mail icon from my iPhone by mistake?

Community Answer

You can find the Mail app in the App Store and download it again.
Question

I deleted my Yahoo email account because I thought it had been hacked, but I did not know that my Reminders list was connected to this account. How can I get that information back?

Community Answer

You would have to get in contact with Yahoo support. Most email services don't immediately delete accounts for this very reason (giving a period between 30 and 90 days when the account is still accessible before deleting information), but if this time has passed and the account has been deleted, your information is unrecoverable.
Question

I need to delete a specific date-to-date email without marking the individual emails, as I have 6000 emails. What can I do?

Community Answer

All you can do is delete the emails separately, unfortunately.