Upadted to 2.2 ~ Now POP3 Account Shows Hundreds of 'Unread' Messages

Question

Hi,
I just did a successful update to v 2,2, everything has gone just fine, except my Mail.
I have two mail accounts, A MobileMe (Which is working just fine) and a Pop3 account.
On my iMac, that account shows NO unread messages, but on my iphone, it says 271 are Unread. I started to delete the first 25 that came up (which are my most recent e-mails) but then it loads another 25 Unread messages.
This is a nightmare, every-time I delete 25, another lot pop-up, yet these messages are most definitely read on on my iMac.
Can someone suggest a remedy for this please?
All suggestions most welcome. ;

Answer 1

You updated to 2.2 from which firmware version?
Sounds like your POP account was recreated or reset as a newly created email account with your iPhone's mail client.
When creating a POP account with an email client, all messages that remain on the server will be downloaded as new unread messages, regardless if you have already downloaded and read the messages with the email client on your computer. This also means you didn't remove the messages from the server when downloaded by the email client used on your computer for accessing the account.
POP account mailboxes and messages are not kept synchronized with the server as is supported with an IMAP account. The only server stored mailbox that is available with a POP account when accessing the account with an email client is the account's Inbox mailbox, and any new messages received at the incoming mail server are downloaded by the email client used to access the account, with an option to remove the downloaded messages from the server when downloaded or leave the messages on the server for download with another email client used to access the account.
In this situation, it sounds like your POP account was recreated or reset on your iPhone as a new account, so all messages that remain on the server were downloaded as new messages again.
Marking a received message as read with an email client for a POP account does not mark the message as read with another email client used to access the account and vice-versa. This is possible with an IMAP account since all server stored mailboxes with an IMAP account are kept synchronized with the server automatically with each email client used to access the account.