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How to mark emails as read with iPhone
by on Friday 18 July 2008 23 Comments
Take a quick look at the screenshot on the left. How many unread emails are sitting in the inbox? The notification icon might say '6' but the real answer is none: the supposedly-unread messages have either been previously read on another computer, are unimportant or – yikes – are simply spam.
And yet that annoying '6' will sit there and over time perhaps become a '7' or a '8', or a '100'. Indeed, if you’ve just set up your iPhone 3G and synched an existing inbox for the first time, that notification number might well read '500'. And it’ll do so until the messages are deleted from or read with the iPhone. This is because the iPhone software doesn’t have a 'mark as read' feature. It’s official, then: the iPhone is stupid.
How to solve the problem? Well, you can’t But read on for a sort-of workaround.
The bad news is that if you’re using a POP email service, you’re stuffed – at least until Apple gets around to issuing a fix (and given all the faults the firm saw fit to carry over into iPhone 2.0, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath). The only way to remove the unread message count from the home-screen icon is to read or delete the offending emails, as noted.
However, users of IMAP-enabled services can make use of server-side features to deal with this annoyance. With Gmail, for instance, you can log into the web interface and use the ‘mark as read’ option there. The next time your iPhone synchs, the marked-as-read information will also be synched – thus removing the unread-message count from the notification icon. If you’re desperate to remove an erroneous indication when out in the field, then work this same trick in Safari on the iPhone. Not elegant, but it works.
Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie
© Dennis Publishing
© Dennis Publishing
Comments
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Come on, dude. Why not just tap the email, open it, then go back to your inbox? If you did have the ability to mark as read, you'd probably have to tap the screen twice anyway (2 taps is all it will take to make an email appear as read).Once read (unless you mark as unread, which iPhone does allow you to do), the green number goes down.If you need to micromanage your email this much you should just plop down at the computer and mark them in bulk. It should update on your iPhone accordingly. -
I don't have a problem w/my iPhone not updating after I've read an email on my computer. Finally, why would you mark SPAM as "read" instead of just deleting it?This complaint of yours is totally lame.
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Actually it is pretty far from a lame complaint; I think you are missing the point Jen. I am a business class user that gets anywhere from 50-100 emails per day. I NEED a simple option to mark all my emails read on the iPhone so I know when something new comes in I may need to deal with. Going thorugh the process of marking them as read indivudually has been very trying, and I have since given up and simply let the email icon tell me I have 117 unread messages. Please keep in mind I use a pc, so your remark:"If you need to micromanage your email this much you should just plop down at the computer and mark them in bulk. It should update on your iPhone accordingly"does not apply to the my version of outlook; read email status does not change... This problem definitly still needs a solution and I will keep looking till I find it.
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I totally agree even though I am getting only 10 or 15 emails a day. It is very inconvenient to process each an every email seperately. Actually I have both: Blackberry and Iphone and I have to say that the Iphone is more a toy and the blackberry something you'd use for serious business.
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Yep, pretty lame. My crackberry does it automatically when I read elsewhere, and when I read them on the berry, that cascades back to PC. I don't expect my touch to do that, but there should be a "mark all read" function. As a software dwveloper I can assure you an hour of work is all it would take. Very lame apple.
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My problem seems related. My e-mails are thru 2 POP services that upload to me.com and then down to my iphone. The problem I have is that read or not read my phone frequently reloads e-mail that has been read on my iphone, hone, or work. I must have a setting crossed but am not sure where to look. Any suggestions?
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Wow, these comments are a year old and the same problem still exists?! How totally lame. I get around 10 e-mails per day, usually all important, so after having read them on my pc, and then my iPhone is telling me I have unread mail (when of course the e-mails are the ones I had just read), I am annoyed to have to open each individually to mark as read. Pretty dumb for a smart phone. If you can delete several e-mails or move to other folders at once in edit mode, it should be simple to have a mark as read feature. Shame on you Apple for not having this simple issue figured out after complaints were made so long ago...
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I agree totally with Paul, i use a MacBook and I have exactly the same problem than you with a PC . I have to mark all the e-mails on my iPhone one by one as read even i just red them on my laptop 10 minutes ago.
I receive from 30 to 50 e-mails per day and this little detail is really time consuming. I would have maybe gotten a Blackberry if i would have known this before purchasing this "smart toy" -
This issue is killing me. Just switched from a Blackberry and finding the iPhone nearly unusable for emails. Further, there is no unified inbox where I can quickly see all of my emails from multiple accounts. Useless. And why no app for this? -
I'm having the same issue too. I can't believe it's 2010 and the same problem from August 2008 exists. I have the iPhone 3GS, I recieve 100-125 emails every day and I can't possibly individually mark them as read. I need a quick way to show that they've been read. It's very annoying. My blackberry did not have this problem. There should be at the very least a way to select all previous emails as read so that new emails can show as unread. Sigh. Hope a solution comes soon...:(
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Got my Vodafone iPhone 3GS yesterday and immediately configured both my work Exchange and private pop email accounts. The Exchange email does seem to sync the Mark as Read with the server, but the issue remains with the POP mail, needing to read every damm one individually! My old Nokia N73 had 'Mark All'& 'Mark as read' menu options, which was easy.
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Wow this is no good. I will be sure to complain directly to apple because this needs to be solved. Even if a POP account cannot update due to certain limitations they still need to add in a "mark as read" function.
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I bought a pay-as-you-go blackberry solely to handle emails. Thats how bad this is. Jen, your either a troll or very young. When you work in the big grown up world, and work with email, its not uncommon to have 100's a day.
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I am also very disappointed with how iPhone handles mail. Its totally madness to have to manually delete/unmark every new mail, it's a computer in there isnt it?
New mail app soon? -
I've been searching for an easy solution to this problem for a very long time too and, yes, seemingly still NOTHING.
I've finally just sent a list of all the comments I could find like ours to Apple, in the hope that the issue will, at the very least, finally be noticed.
If you want to send your comments about this issue to Apple, too, you can do so by going to
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
maybe if enough of us say something, the needs of working adults will be recognized as actually mattering for a change. -
I agree with you all (bar Jen) and am shocked such a long-awaited and expensive piece of kit could be so poor. I had a samsung omnia before, if it wasn't for the failing battery I might have returned to it, I got that almost two years ago when it first was released and that had a 'mark all' and 'mark as read' feature.
I wonder if a mail app has been produced but apple won't include it on the app store, it would be like admitting their failure to include a 'mark as read' feature, so the only way to get it is to jailbreak your phone and upload apps that way. -
I'm pretty dissapointed at the email functionality of my new iPhone, and the inability to "mark as read" should be solved by a bit of schoolboy programming by Apple. It's completely annoying that I've constantly got emails showing as unread. I don't want to have to access every email, especially the ones I've already read on my PC, or obvious spam
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I'm just finding out that the Email on Iphone isn't that great. Coming from previously a Blackberry and the HTC Hero (Android), the iphone is pretty poor for Email for business users. The previously mention handsets beats the iphone by far.
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I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who is not all that tech savvy. Until now, I thought that I was the only one having this problem. I've been trying to resolve it for months to no avail. I'm at the point of considering canceling my pop accounts and strictly using Imap. Someone has to have a fix for this soon. It seems like it would be far too easy. Oh, and Jen, I don't think there would be anyone complaining with one email a day
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http://lifehacker.com/396928/mark-all-unread-messages-as-read-in-gmail
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I had exactly the same issue coming from a blackberry, however i've just discovered on my 3GS that if you open your first unread email there is an up and down arrow on the top right hand corner, you can quickly tap the up or down arrow to read all messages at a rapid pace. I realise this isn't a fix but got rid of my 200 unread emails in about 60 seconds. I hope this helps.
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@Billy: not exactly fast, though. If the emails you have on your POP account (let's say, a Yahoo! account) are not text-only, but rather HTML; or if the emails have somewhat large attachments (not necessarily too big), even on wifi it will take between 2-90 seconds to open each and every one (they need to open so they can get marked down as read). Say you have around 150-200 "unread" messages... Just make the math, there.
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As the owner of both and older iPhone and a BB Storm1, I decided to upgrade and NOT jailbreak the iPhone to see what all the fuss was about. Sadly, my Storm still SMOKES the iPhone in regards to the way it handles the 8 (!!) email addresses I access.
Finally, an integrated inbox! YES! But still no "mark as read" or true OTA sync with the server(s)? Lame, Apple, and this comes from a Mac user (desktop and laptop).
Much as I want to run "stock" iOS4, I fear a jailbreak and a trip to the 3rd party apps might be in order simply to make this "smartphone" USABLE. Heading to the iPhone feedback site to lodge a formal complaint right after I post this. Time for email to be handled right, which Blackberry does, for the most part.
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