When moving or deleting an email on your iPhone you get the error:
Unable to Move Message The message could not be moved to the mailbox Trash.
This only happens if you are using IMAP servers for your email and isn’t an issue for POP mailboxes.
The same error can also appear on an iPad when using mail.
This is because the error is caused by the iPhone operating system iOS and not by a broken device.
This problem is a well known software ‘glitch’ that has been around since 2012.
Luckily it has a fairly simple fix that only takes a few minutes to complete.
Unable to move message to trash error effects iPhone, iPad and iPod
This error also appears on other iOS devices including the iPad and the iPod Touch.
The same fix will work for all of these iOS based devices so feel free to follow the same procedure.
Please note:
The post titled How to fix iPad IMAP error “unable to move message to trash has been merged with this article as it is the same fix so it didn’t need a dedicated one.
This fix will work with:
- iPhone
- iPad
- iPod Touch
How-to fix this error
This video shows the fix, alternatively you can use the easy to follow steps which describes the process in more detail below.
1. Press the Home button and choose Settings.
2. Scroll down and click Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap your email account.
4. Scroll to the bottom and click Advanced.
Can’t see the Advanced button?
Some visitors have reported that they do not see the Advanced button. If this happens to you then you have to delete your IMAP email account and add it again manually. Follow these instructions to add your email account to your iPhone manually. This will then let you see the Advanced button.
5. Scroll to the bottom and tap the empty IMAP Path Prefix.
6. Enter INBOX in capitals, then click ‘Accounts’ at the top left and click ‘Done’ at the top right twice to close the settings.
Can’t see the IMAP path prefix?
Some visitors have reported that they do not see the IMAP prefix. If this happens to you then you have to delete your IMAP email account and add it again manually. Follow these instructions to add your email account to your iPhone manually. This will then let you see the Advanced button.
7. Press the Home button and then re-open Mail.
8. You will now be able to delete or move your emails on your iPhone.
Are you a hotmail, live.com or outlook.com user?
This fix does not work for hotmail, live.com, or outlook.com because Microsoft does not use IMAP, it uses Exchange Active Link (EAS).
To fix this error you can either:
It should work if you use Microsoft Exchange services such as Office365.
Did you find this article helpful?
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Also, if you are feeling really generous after having your issue solved please leave some encouraging feedback in the comments section at the bottom of the page. I love getting feedback from visitors. It encourages me to find further solutions to those awkward little iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Mac problems that we all suffer from.
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Hi, my name is James Wiseman and I am the guy behind iChimp. I love to write about iPhone, iPad & iOS news, tips & tutorials.
