I'm using an iPad Pro and someone has sent me thousands of emails. They appear to be obvious spam, but they aren't being moved to the junk folder. I've blocked the sender, but that only seems to affect future messages and doesn't remove the emails they already sent. What's the quickest way to select and delete all of these existing messages?
3 Answers
In Apple Mail, search for the sender’s email address, tap Edit, and select the results you want to remove. You may need to delete them in several batches if there are too many for the app to handle at once. Also check whether the messages are in Inbox, Archive, or another mailbox rather than Junk.
Blocking a sender usually prevents or filters future mail; it doesn’t automatically erase messages that already arrived. The practical solution is to search for that sender, use the selection controls in the Mail app, and move all matching messages to Trash. If the iPad app is too slow with thousands of results, deleting them through the email provider’s webmail interface may be easier.
Open the folder where those messages are stored, tap Edit, select the messages, and then tap the trash icon. If they’re all from the same sender, sorting or searching by the sender’s address first should make it easier to select them in batches.
I’m using an iPad, so I don’t know how to use desktop shortcuts like Shift-click. I’m looking for the iPad steps specifically.
They aren’t in the Junk folder, so I’ll need to find them in whichever mailbox they were delivered to and remove them there.