How to Delete an Email Account from the iPhone and iPad

No longer want an email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Entire email accounts are very easy to remove, so whether you changed jobs, email addresses, an email provider was shut down, or perhaps you just don’t want to get emails for a particular account on your iOS device any more, you can easily delete the entire account in one fell swoop.

It’s important to point out that deleting an email account removes all of its data from the iOS device, including any account specific mail settings, login details, drafts, mail messages, mailbox content, and of course, notifications and alerts for that account will no longer come through either. Be sure that is what you are looking to do before proceeding, otherwise you may unintentionally delete something you’d rather keep around on your iPhone/iPad.

• Open Settings and choose “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”


• Under “Accounts” tap on the account you wish to delete


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• Tap the large red “Delete Account” button, and confirm when again when asked to delete the account

When you head back to Mail app and you’ll find the mailbox for that account is no longer visible, and you will no longer have the option of sending emails from that address in a new message composition or mail reply screen.

There isn’t much harm in removing a mail account from iOS because you can always add the account back again in the future should need be. Because most commonly used mail servers store the messages on a remote server and then download them to your device as requested, those email messages will come back to the iPhone or iPad if the account has been re-added, so long as those emails (or the account itself) have not be deleted from the server as well.

You can also delete and then re-add an entire account as a shortcut to removing every single locally stored mail message from iOS for that specific account, which with giant mailboxes may be faster than deleting a bunch of individual email messages in bulk the way you’re supposed to. Just be aware that removing an account to delete the messages locally from your device will not delete them from the mail server.