Email Corrupted With "Phantom" Messages

[walterwood44]

I have two email accounts on my Evo 4G: Gmail and a POP account from my home ISP. I am using the default email program. Yesterday I deleted a number of messages from my Gmail account. A couple, but not all, of these deleted messages are now showing up in the Inbox for my POP account. When I try to open or delete these "phantom" messages the email program crashes.

I have rebooted the phone, even removing the battery. I have gone into both Gmail and my POP account using the web interface from my desktop and cleaned and emptied the trash and any junk mail. I have also cleared the Cache for Gmail on the phone.

Note sure if this is related but yesterday I installed the Amazon market, Crazy Birds and a couple of other apps.

As a last resort I could try to deleting and reinstalling my ISP email account but I would like to avoid that. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to correct this?

Thanks
Walter

 

[anon(123856)]

Does your ISP have a Web Mail interface you could log into? I've had issues in the past with corrupt messages and such causing email client problems and have successfully cleared them by logging into Web Mail and deleting the problem messages. I don't know if this will fix your problem but it's easy to try and might work.

 

[walterwood44]

Does your ISP have a Web Mail interface you could log into? I've had issues in the past with corrupt messages and such causing email client problems and have successfully cleared them by logging into Web Mail and deleting the problem messages. I don't know if this will fix your problem but it's easy to try and might work.

The messages do not appear in the webmail interface, only on the phone. I am guessing that somehow the message database got messed up and co-mingled the messages from the different providers.

 

[IAmSixNine]

Its a glitch in the EVO stock mail app. Its happened to me a few times. What i had to do to solve it was delete the account on the phone that is associated with the corrupt data. Then add it back.
I would say on average this happened to me every other month.
I have 5 pop 3 yahoo accts and 1 exchange acct with the stock app and deleting the affected account fixed it.

 

[anon(123856)]

Too bad. I was hoping it would be an easy fix for you...

 

[walterwood44]

Its a glitch in the EVO stock mail app. Its happened to me a few times. What i had to do to solve it was delete the account on the phone that is associated with the corrupt data. Then add it back.
I would say on average this happened to me every other month.
I have 5 pop 3 yahoo accts and 1 exchange acct with the stock app and deleting the affected account fixed it.

That was going to be my last resort as I hate to lose any sent messages that I might need.

Is there another email program that would be recommended with the Evo?

Thanks,
Walter

 

[IAmSixNine]

I tried K9mail and it was ok. But didnt use it for more then a few weeks before going back to stock.

 

[SurplusGadgets]

This same issue has bugged me for over a year. About once a month a new phantom message is added. One account had five clogging up the screen. Another had an "unread" message that would cause the widget to constantly show new mail. I finally did a bit more digging and believe there is a fix. Tricky but works reliably if you know what you are doing. Better than factory resetting the phone OR deleting the mail account and losing all the messages -- which is what Sprint/HTC/everyone seems to recommend. Especially given they keep coming back.

The problem seems to be when the message itself gets deleted from the folder /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/app_mail/ but the entry is not deleted (or modified) in /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/databases/mail.db. This seems to happen arbitrarily (timing issue in the code?); even when I have not tried to delete the message from the Inbox. Sometimes when I have not read it yet but deleted it from the server. (Suspect the app creates the entry in the DB before it downloads the message then does not clean-up when the message is no longer available to download.)

The solution to remove the phantom message is to use an SQLite editor (like in the add-on to Root Explorer) and delete the entry for that message in the "messages" table inside Mail.db. [Note: you need a rooted phone.] So once you enter the editor for this database and select the "messages" table, set the "filter" to find something more unique in the subject column -- the second, smaller font line of the phantom message header displayed. Then to further refine and find the correct row, try and match the date that appears in the phantom message. As the DB stores the date in the 1970-start-of-time format, I usually look in the "_headers" column for a readable date. Key is to feel confident about finding the row/record of the phantom message. Once you do, simply press-and-hold (in Speed Software's SQLite Editor) to bring up a menu of actions. Select "Delete Record". Refresh the mail application and the phantom message should disappear. This has worked reliably as long as you select the correct message. (note: the header dates are sometimes from different time zones!) Sometimes using the MailboxId can help identify the correct message. If the phantom message is the only one in the Inbox, than the ID will be unique for your message. Or you can figure out the MailboxId from the table "mailboxs". You can edit other fields like set the READ column to "1" to mark the message read or set the mailbox ID to that of the trash to keep this phantom header/message but put it in the trash. But best usually to simply delete the record because the actual message is not there anyway; just the database entry.

Hope this helps others as I have been pulling my hair out for a year.

 

[walterwood44]

I ended up linking my POP account to Gmail and now only have one account on the phone, Gmail. Not an ideal solution but rooting the phone seems extreme just to fix this issue.

Thanks everyone!