The last few days have been annoying for me. A friend was teasing me that my unread email message count was high. The number showed hundreds. The count was wrong and I typically ignored the number.
Why were the numbers wrong?
I sync accounts between my iPhone and three different desktops. Reading a message on one does not always update the mailbox. This leads to numbers showing on the phone and desktop which are not correct. I usually ignore the numbers but it seemed time to do a little investigation.
Anyway, after listening to a friend poke fun at me, I spent a little time cleaning up the read and unread messages through a browser. Interestingly, the next day, Outlook on my desktop showed over 500 unread messages. These were all sync errors. These were cleaned up and even more error messages were coming up. Finally, I cleaned out any new error messages downloaded – over 17 MB of files – and the counts on the three desktops were the same (zero).
Unfortunately the count on my iPhone was at 66 – still an incorrect number of unread numbers.
The fix was actually fairly simple. Go into settings for the exchange and move the slider from on to off. Load the mail application and the exchange box should not show. Close the iPhone app. Now go back to the settings and move the slider from off to on. Now load the email app and the count will be correct.
Done. The problem is now fixed.