The Messages (and the Number of Messages) in Clean Email Do Not Match My Email App
Sometimes you may notice that the messages (or the number of messages) shown in Clean Email do not match what you see in your email app.
This can happen for a few different reasons:
- You have pinned messages from one or more specific senders
- Your email client may be waiting to download the updated list of messages
- Clean Email may be waiting to sync with your email provider
- You deleted a lot of messages with Clean Email and they are still being removed or your email provider has directed us to slow down processing, but we hide deleted messages from our interface right away
- Some messages are automatically hidden (or automatically shown) in Clean Email
- A discrepancy has occurred due to a technical error
You Have Pinned Messages from One or More Senders
You can choose to pin specific senders’ messages, causing Clean Email to ignore the messages. Pinned messages are excluded from all cleaning rules and may not be counted in the total number of messages. For more information, please see Pinned Messages.
Your Email Client May Be Waiting to Download the Updated List of Messages
Your email client might not be in sync with your mail server if it is waiting to download updated message information.
Periodic downloads may happen automatically, but if there are or have been recent issues with your network connection, that may prevent or interfere with your email client’s ability to communicate with the server.
You may be able to refresh the list of messages from within your email application to trigger a sync with the mail server.
For more information, please see I Deleted Many Messages but I Can Still See Them In My Email App.
Clean Email May Be Waiting to Sync with Your Email Provider
Just as your email client may need to periodically sync your email provider’s servers, the same applies to Clean Email. So it’s possible that either your email client OR Clean Email may not be in sync with your mail server, which would lead to a discrepancy like this. Once both your email client and Clean Email have downloaded the latest list of messages, the messages (and number of messages) should match once again.
Your Email Provider has Directed Us to Slow Down Processing, But We Hide Deleted Messages from Our Interface Right Away
Although Clean Email has the capacity to process thousands of messages per second, processing slow-downs happen when your email provider requires us to process fewer messages at a time, or to increase the delay between sending requests.
Even though, for example, Clean Email can instruct your email provider to “delete these 10,000 messages now”, your provider may refuse to process that many messages in a short period. Each email provider has distinct limitations on the way third parties such as Clean Email can interact with your mailbox. Clean Email’s proprietary tools allow us to optimize these interactions for each provider and process messages as fast as possible, but we are still subject to the limitations set by your provider.
However, when you take an action such as deleting messages in Clean Email, we immediately update the messages shown in Clean Email. As a result, after moving or deleting a large number of messages in Clean Email, you may see a mismatch because the messages may still appear in your email app temporarily, until your email provider has allowed us to finish processing them all.
Therefore, if you perform one or more actions on a large number of messages, please allow extra time for Clean Email to finish processing your actions.
For more information, please see Why Does Clean Email Sometimes Slow Down?
Some Messages Are Automatically Hidden (or Automatically Shown) in Clean Email
Clean Email is designed to help you get the most of your email experience. We automatically hide certain types of messages that may appear in your email app, and we automatically show certain others when some users might not expect it.
For example, messages that are marked as spam may still appear in your email app, but Clean Email never shows them. That could affect the total number of messages shown in Clean Email being different from the total number in your email app.
As another example, when you archive messages in your mail app, they are removed from the inbox. However, many Smart Folders in Clean Email show all messages in your account, regardless of what folder the messages are in. Certain Smart Folders apply the “In Inbox” filter by default, so archived messages will not appear in those folders. But they will appear in all other Smart Folders in Clean Email, so if you compare what you see in Clean Email to what is in your email app, please keep in mind that Clean Email may be including archived messages.
For more information, please see The Archive Button Does Not Work. Why?.
You might also want to check out our article Searching and Filtering to learn how to control which filters are applied to the folders you are viewing in Clean Email.
A Discrepancy Has Occurred Due to a Technical Error
After reviewing each of the above scenarios, if you believe none of them are applicable and you still see a discrepancy between the messages (or number of messages) in your email client and what you see in Clean Email, please contact Clean Email Support for further assistance. Although it happens very rarely, it is possible for such a discrepancy to be caused by a technical error.
Please contact us and we will be happy to help.
