How to Delete an Email Account from iPhone and iPad

No longer want an email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Entire email accounts are very easy to remove from an iPhone or iPad, so whether you changed jobs, email addresses, an email provider was shut down, or perhaps you just don’t want to get emails for a particular account on your device any more, you can easily delete the entire account from the device rather quickly and in one fell swoop.

It’s important to point out that deleting an email account removes all of its data from the iOS or iPadOS device, including any account specific mail settings, login details, drafts, mail messages, mailbox content, and of course, notifications and alerts for that account will no longer come through either. Be sure that is what you are looking to do before proceeding, otherwise you may unintentionally delete something you’d rather keep around on your iPhone or iPad.

How to Remove an eMail Account from iPhone or iPad

The process of deleting email accounts from an iPhone or iPad is slightly different depending on which iOS or iPadOS version you are running. Here is what you’ll want to do to remove a mail address and the associated account inbox from your device:

1. Open the Settings app
2. Choose “Mail”, or if the iOS version is older, you may have to choose “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”, or “Passwords & Accounts”
3. Choose “Accounts” and from that section, tap on the email account you wish to delete
4. Confirm the email address / account is what you want to remove, then tap the large red “Delete Account” button



5. Confirm again when asked to delete the email account from iPhone or iPad
6. Repeat the process to delete other email accounts as desired

In modern versions of iOS and iPadOS, the account settings and email removal panel looks like the images above.

When you head back to Mail app and you’ll find the mailbox for that account is no longer visible, and you will no longer have the option of sending emails from that address in a new message composition or mail reply screen.

There isn’t much harm in removing a mail account from iOS because you can always add the account back again in the future should need be. Because most commonly used mail servers store the messages on a remote server and then download them to your device as requested, those email messages will come back to the iPhone or iPad if the account has been re-added, so long as those emails (or the account itself) have not be deleted from the server as well.

You can also delete and then re-add an entire account as a shortcut to removing every single locally stored mail message from iOS for that specific account, which with giant mailboxes may be faster than deleting a bunch of individual email messages in bulk the way you’re supposed to. Just be aware that removing an account to delete the messages locally from your device will not delete them from the mail server.

For historical purposes and for users who are still running older versions of iOS system software, this is what the simple account removal process looks like in those older versions of iOS.

The email account settings screen on older iOS versions is as follows:

And the email account removal process on those older iOS versions is as follows:

Note this is only a change in the appearance of the account removal process, as the actual ability delete email accounts is the same regardless of what version of system software is on the iPhone or iPad.

If you know of another method or any other helpful tips or tricks to delete an email account from iPhone or iPad, share with us in the comments below.