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When I delete an email message in Mail on my iPad, everything works normally—unless I'm offline. When this is the case, it deletes from the iPad, but the message on the web interface (in this case FastMail) retains it in the Inbox with a strikethrough line:

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Is this a problem with IMAP, Mail, or FastMail? How can I make Mail actually delete the message?

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1 Answer

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The IMAP protocol has this silly concept of a message that has been marked as deleted but isn't really actually deleted.

The iPad only marks the mail as deleted. The IMAP client on the iPad considers this sufficient for the message to be gone, and you can't see it anymore when using that client. The web mail wants the message to be REALLY deleted before it goes away. If it's just marked deleted, it will still appear... with a strikethrough line.

To get the message to disappear from the web mail, you need to expunge deleted messages. The web mail interface might offer a way to do it directly, or else it will do it automatically when you delete any message from within the web mail interface. When messages are expunged, they are expunged all together, so it is enough to delete one single other message, and all of the other marked deleted (struck through) emails in the same folder will follow.

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Nice clear answer! Why, though, does it really delete it when the iPad is online when the message is deleted? – timothymh Mar 22 '12 at 1:35
Ah, that's interesting. I missed that little detail in your question. It would appear that when online the iPad client issues an expunge automatically when a message is deleted but it doesn't do it when syncing up after a period of being offline. I couldn't say why it does that. – Celada Mar 22 '12 at 1:39

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