Several users have reported an issue in the Mail app on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) displays mysterious messages with no subject and no sender.
These items usually display the following:
- (No Sender)
- (No Subject)
- This message has no content
Fixes
Disable then re-enable Mail. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and tap the account in which the phantom messages are appearing. Slide Mail to “Off” then exit Settings and go to Mail; the messages should be gone. Now go back to Settings and turn Mail back on.
Force quit Mail. Go to the home screen, then double-press the Home button to bring up the multitasking pane. Find the Mail app, then hold its icon until it begins to wiggle, then tap the small red circle in the upper-left corner of the icon to quit it. Relaunch Mail, and the messages should be gone.
Turn off threading. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and turn off ”Organize by Thread.” This may prevent the phantom messages from appearing.
Nicholas on 
Lawrence Alonzo on 
rickyc on 
Carnghamcats on 
Deb Santagata on 
MARK on 
Shafqat Zaman on 
AppleID:( on 
August 14, 2010 at 7:49 AM
Thank you! I use my gmail account and the “Organize by thread” fixed it!
August 22, 2010 at 10:29 AM
Where are these messages coming from? I have 21 of them, all dated 12/31/69!!! Hopefully this fixes it and prevents me receiving any more.
September 8, 2010 at 10:25 AM
Go into mail settings from settings Icon and turn off notes. That fixes it
November 15, 2011 at 3:22 AM
Where do I find notes exactly in Settings?
September 13, 2010 at 3:21 PM
Thanks for the tip. It solved the problem!!
September 15, 2010 at 7:05 PM
Setting up a rule that junks all mail without @ also does it.
September 20, 2010 at 4:30 PM
I had 2 dated 12/31/69. Restarting my phone deleted them.
January 18, 2011 at 10:20 PM
Well, I can say that I got this problem after renaming (the description) of my email accounts on my iPhone 4 to “username@mydomain.com”. I replicated the issue on my iPad. So for me the solution was to rename the accounts back to something without the @-sign. This worked on both of my devices.
January 26, 2011 at 3:08 PM
Thanks for the tips! I was getting pretty sick and tired of these no sender Emails appearing on my Ipod Touch. I did the first tip disable then re enable email whent back to mail and they were all gone. I also just turned off the notes and we will see how that works.
February 15, 2011 at 9:43 AM
i got a couple of these emails on my home computer; but, not on my iphone. i didn’t open them, just deleted them–i was afraid it was some malicious emails–it freaked me out.
March 15, 2011 at 2:38 AM
Hi all,
I work in email marketing and recently one of my colleages received one of our emails on his iphone with sender present, but subject line showing as (no subject). The content of the email was present.
I’m trying to figure out if this is an error on the part of our ESP, or if it’ smore of an iphone bug… Anyone got any ideas? The examples above seem to suggest both (no sender) and (no subject) show and the email is blank. Whereas with ours the sender & email content were present, but subject line was (no subject).
Thanks in advance
Eddie.
August 21, 2011 at 10:05 AM
Thank you so much for the tip, it worked beautifully. it was driving me mad having a mailbox full of non deletable mail items.
November 3, 2011 at 1:59 PM
Thank you for the tip! Though the first one did not help, the second one seems to have fixed the problem. I have no idea why it works, but glad that it does!
November 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM
Is it a hack or is it a apple mail bug?
November 20, 2011 at 4:41 AM
i am still recieving these emails but mine have the exact date 07/11/11 19/11/11 etc and i have tried doing what is stated above!! what are they??
December 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM
Thank you so much; it worked perfectly…after reading many threads with helpful hints. This is the best!
January 4, 2012 at 2:09 AM
Hi,
I have had this for 2 days, and tried literally everything to delete it:
- Switching mail on/off
- Switching note on/off
- Shutting down app (double click home button, then using red minus sign)
- Restoring phone from back up
- and a few more i think…. and none of these worked
THEN TODAY I FIXED IT FINALLY:
- Switching off mail
- Changing mail account settings to “break” the account (i.e. wrong domain or wrong username)
- Deleting mail from account
- Waiting for iphone to ask for correct details
- Providing correct details
- So far (10 mins later) it seems to have no come back yet….fingers crossed.
Hope this one works for people if they can’t fix it yet.
January 28, 2012 at 4:49 AM
Seems to have done the trick although it cleaned out the rest of the e-mail history downloaded to that account on my iPhone although it is still visible in the account on the web based server. Thanks.
January 23, 2012 at 6:11 PM
Awesome! Thanks so much for offering such a simple solution to a very annoying issue.
January 28, 2012 at 9:22 AM
Thanks, this is perhaps the most useful info so far, I tried talking to yahoo about this but maybe it’s just an apple issue after all
January 28, 2012 at 10:03 AM
I had a similar experience. I got the subject and header but no content in the body of the email. So I just tried the fix now and waiting to see if it works. I will keep you informed
February 2, 2012 at 10:35 PM
None of my apps work please help me im dessperate:*(
April 11, 2012 at 1:09 AM
I have aan extra account with fake settings.
If you switch in your mail app to The wrong account and back to gmail, you Will see your massages.
April 26, 2012 at 8:56 PM
I had the same issue on my iPad, tried all suggested fixes above, none of these worked. I have an alternative account ‘other’ setup.
Solution that did work for me was deleting the mail account and creating it again, not simply turning it off.
This cleared the bogus e-mails from the inbox.
May 9, 2012 at 7:06 PM
Thanks! The first one worked for me.
I went to the “settings” icon then clicked on
“mail,contacts,calendars”‘, the switched “organize by thread” to “off”
Then back to mail and they were GONE. Then went back to settings and switched “organize by thread” back “on”.