Support Start > Email > Advanced Email Questions > IMAP > Trash Deleted After 7 Days

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When you set up an IMAP email account on an iOS device such as the iPad, iPod, or iPhone, the device will delete messages from the “Trash” folder on our servers after 7 days.

Some users wish to disable this feature altogether. To do so, you can:

• Settings
• Apps > Mail > Mail Accounts (for iOS 18 or later)
  or Mail > Accounts (for iOS 14-17); Passwords & Accounts (for iOS 12-13); Accounts & Passwords (for iOS 11); Mail (for iOS 10); Mail, Contacts, Calendars (for iOS 9 and previous versions)
• (your email address)

Then tap Account Settings:

Then scroll down to the very bottom and tap Advanced:

You’ll probably see something like this:

Tap After one week, then choose any option between Never and After one month:

This controls how long messages will stay in the “Trash” folder before they’re automatically deleted by the device.

After changing this, tap Advanced in the top left to go back one screen. Then click Account Settings in the top left to go back one more screen, then click Done in the top right to save the changes.

Make sure nothing else is deleting mail

If you use other programs or devices that connect to the same mailbox, make sure the other programs are also set to not delete messages from the Trash folder. Any messages they delete will disappear from your iPhone or iPad, too, regardless of the iPhone or iPad settings.

As a general tip, we recommend that messages you need to keep should be stored outside of the “Trash” folder, since that folder is automatically emptied by many mail programs.