Can I safely delete an old "account" from my e-mail program without losing mail?
With most e-mail programs, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Entourage, deleting an e-mail “account” in the program does not delete the messages that have already been retrieved. You can safely delete or replace an e-mail account in these programs without affecting or deleting previously downloaded messages.
However, the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and the Apple Mail and Thunderbird programs, work a little differently. Read the information below before deleting accounts in those programs.
Apple iPhone / iPad / iPod touch (iOS devices)
Be sure to read the small description of what will be deleted that appears on the screen when you choose “Delete Account”.
When you delete a POP account from an iOS device, you will lose all mail stored in the local Sent and Trash folders on the device. You will also lose any mail which is in the Inbox and has been deleted from the server. If you do not want to lose this mail, then you should disable the account instead of deleting it:
- Go to Settings.
- Choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
- Choose your POP mail account.
- Change the “Account” setting to Off.
- Tap Done to save the change.
When you delete an IMAP account from an iOS device, you will lose all mail stored in the local Sent and Trash folders on the device. You can check if the Sent and Trash folders are being saved locally by following the steps at the bottom of our iOS setup page. You may also lose the copy of any “Notes” which are supposed to be synchronized with that IMAP account. (We have seen unpredictable behavior in deleting notes when deleting an IMAP account.)
Apple Mail
With the Apple Mail program, if a mailbox (an “account”) is deleted, it removes all messages associated with that mailbox.
Because of that, we recommend disabling the account instead:
- Click the Mail menu, then choose Preferences.
- Click the Accounts icon if necessary to display the account list.
- Click the account you wish to disable and click Advanced.
- Uncheck the boxes marked Enable this account and Include when automatically checking for new mail.
If you follow those steps, the mail will remain even though the account will no longer be used.
If you do want to actually delete a mailbox but keep the old messages, make a backup of your computer and move the messages into another account's Inbox first. That way the messages should still be in your Mail program after you delete the mailbox.
Mozilla Thunderbird
If you use Thunderbird and originally set up the account to use the “global mailbox” for a POP connection, or you use an IMAP connection, then it's okay to delete the account. However, if you set a POP account to save the messages into its own mailbox, then deleting the account will also delete the messages.