Mail folders unmanageable

[Buddyboy]

I have a pop email account with my ISP on my iPad along with an iCloud email. My mailboxes recently began showing huge numbers of unread mail and my available space was down to very little. I cured that by deleting my pop mail account then re-establishing it. Sadly that created another problem. I now have extra Sent, Spam and Trash folders after the usual ones. They are empty and serve no purpose. I cannot delete them. I click to edit and select each but the only choice offered on the edit page is "delete account". I hit that but the folder remains. Is this a bug? Is there a cure?

 

[twerppoet]

Go into the POP account's settings in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and drill down into the Advanced features. Somewhere in there you should find the settings for those folders.

Now, I don't have a POP account, so I'm not certain if those settings are there, or if you can turn them on/off. They exist for IMAP, but can only be changed from local to server folders.

Good luck.

 

[twerppoet]

Also, if you choose Edit when viewing the Mailboxes you can turn on/off a variety of folder views.

 

[Buddyboy]

Thanks for your response, twerppoet. Poking around where you pointed me (I had been there in my hunt already), while it did not solve the issue it provided a little insight. It seems that on my iPad I have the usual inbox, sent, trash, etc. If I create additional folders there, they appear on my ISP mail account at the server. In the same way that my iPad will not let me delete those main folders that it provides, nor will my ISP server for its own similar folders, yet they are shown on my iPad under the iPads own folders. Hopefully that makes sense.

My iPad never used to show the server folders in this way. It recently began accumulating huge numbers of unseen mail, for example the inbox reportedly contained almost 30,000 messages, none to be seen anywhere. At first I ignored the number shown but my storage capacity was rapidly reducing to zero due to the mail. I researched and arrived at the solution to delete the mail account entirely then reload it. That action solved the unseen mail storage problem. My available capacity was restored but, since then, I have had this issue of additional sent, draft, trash, etc., folders.

I now have some understanding of what I am seeing but, sadly, no better understanding of how to resolve it. Perhaps this is a new bug because this seems to have reared its head around the time I updated the OS on the iPad to the latest version.

 

[twerppoet]

I've no idea why this would happen for a POP3 account. I'm pretty sure those folders will be local only, and none deletable, but they should have been there before.

With IMAP, your iCloud account, it's easy to accidentally create extra folders; but they will usually be on the server, and if they are not they can be changed in the settings.

So, sorry, no ideas one what's going on.

 

[Buddyboy]

Thanks for being there anyway. If I figure out any more I will endeavour to post for others' benefit.

 

[twerppoet]

No problem. Good luck.

 

[jon229]

Many pop isp's have a web interface for email. If you can log onto that interface maybe you can solve some of those problems you are having from their web interface.