Problem deleting emails

[Gallopinhairpin]

My wife has a Galaxy J5 running Android 6.0.1. She is experiencing a really annoying problem when trying to delete emails from her inbox. As soon as she's deleted them they immediately pop up again in the inbox. Each deletion adds a new copy to the recycle folder. It's as if the email client isn't registering the fact that it's already downloaded the emails and so is downloading them again. This behaviour only stops after she's read them on her main computer and deleted them from the mailserver.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has encountered this problem and/or has any suggestions on how to deal with it.

 

[Hadron]

Sounds like a problem with the email client. What sort of email account is it (IMAP, POP3, Exchange,...), and what are the account settings in the app (e.g. I'm guessing it is not set to delete from the server when she deletes from the phone)? Different account types have different options and behaviour, which is why I'm asking for more information (though I might add that I haven't used POP3 this decade, perhaps not this century, so am not terribly expert with those).

 

[Gallopinhairpin]

It's an IMAP account. What kind of settings are you referring to? I'm sure it's not set for deleting from the server when deleting from the phone and I can't find any setting to change that. Interestingly on my own phone, a Galaxy S5, the email client deletes from the server by default and I can't find any way to change that either. All the available settings on both phones are otherwise identical apart from the account names.

 

[svim]

Which email service is she using? Gmail? Yahoo Mail? Outlook? An independent or work email service?
Which email client app is she using? The default email app or an installed, third-party app? There's bound to be a Settings/Preferences menu in the app itself. A lot of these types of apps have quick setup options for the masses, along more detailed options to enter the required settings manually.

Has she been having this problem for quite a while or did it just start occurring recently? It could just be a temporary glitch matter. Try going into the Settings >> Apps menu, find the entry for the email app, tap on the 'Force stop' button, and then find the 'Clear cache' button and tap on that. Then start up the email app and see if that made any improvement.

 

[Gallopinhairpin]

So many questions, lol. The email service is provided by our ISP. The email client is the one provided by default in the phone (same with mine). I can't find any "about" info on it other than the version number, and assume it's provided by Samsung. The settings options for it seem to be severely limited.

I can't say for certain that the problem has existed since she first bought the phone but it's certainly been there for quite a long time. I wonder if it's been introduced by an update somewhere along the line. It constantly bugs me that there seems to be no control of updates in either of our phones and no way of rolling back if one breaks the system or app.

I tried doing a Force Stop, this generated a warning which I confirmed. This disabled the Force Stop button but didn't stop the app. I've no idea where to find the Clear Cache button.

 

[Hadron]

Do you get system updates forced by your carrier? Normal app updates you can always choose not to install (just turn off automatic updates), and most people apart from the victims, sorry "customers", of some US carriers also get to choose whether system updates are applied.

Personally I use third party apps anyway rather than accepting the limitations of whatever the manufacturer chooses to include.

 

[svim]

So many questions, lol. The email service is provided by our ISP. The email client is the one provided by default in the phone (same with mine). I can't find any "about" info on it other than the version number, and assume it's provided by Samsung. The settings options for it seem to be severely limited.

I can't say for certain that the problem has existed since she first bought the phone but it's certainly been there for quite a long time. I wonder if it's been introduced by an update somewhere along the line. It constantly bugs me that there seems to be no control of updates in either of our phones and no way of rolling back if one breaks the system or app.

I tried doing a Force Stop, this generated a warning which I confirmed. This disabled the Force Stop button but didn't stop the app. I've no idea where to find the Clear Cache button.

OK so without knowing just which email service it's hard to be more specific but go to her ISP's web site and do a search for the email set up settings. Every ISP that provides email services will have them posted somewhere. Those are the settings you'll need as a reference.
Now go to the Play Store and just install a good email app. The default Samsung email app that came with Marshmallow is most likely to be a bit dated at this point. I'll suggest trying Blue Mail, it's free and very popular with a long history. A more important aspect being it will have a more extensive feature set than the default email app, and most importantly it will have current security and privacy functionality:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.bluemail.mail
Once installed set up her email account on the app. Depending on the email service it might be a matter where you just need to enter her email address and password and the app will automatically configure things for you. But if not, just use the ISP's recommended settings to manually set things up. If you're averse to such things, get a more tech savvy friend to help you out.

 

[MoodyBlues]

It constantly bugs me that there seems to be no control of updates in either of our phones

Are you sure? Have you checked all of their system settings, and turned off auto-update for the Play Store?

and no way of rolling back if one breaks the system or app.

I'd love this!

I tried doing a Force Stop, this generated a warning which I confirmed. This disabled the Force Stop button

No, it just grayed it out temporarily, signifying that it had just been used and couldn't be used again right then because the app wasn't running, so there's nothing to stop.

but didn't stop the app.

It had to. Unless you thought you were killing one app but actually did another.

I've no idea where to find the Clear Cache button.

They've cleverly [sarcasm intended] hidden it under 'Storage.' You'll find 'Clear data' there, too.

 

[Gallopinhairpin]

Firstly, thanks to everyone for your assistance and suggestions.

it just grayed it out temporarily, signifying that it had just been used and couldn't be used again right then because the app wasn't running, so there's nothing to stop......
......It had to. Unless you thought you were killing one app but actually did another

I definitely clicked 'Force Stop' on the email app in the App manager. The button didn't grey out but stopped responding. I expected once I'd stopped it a button to restart would appear but it didn't. It clearly didn't stop the app because immediately afterwards I tried sending a test email from her phone to mine and it worked. This is currently the only email app installed so there's no possibility of me having stopped the wrong one. very odd!

go to the Play Store and just install a good email app. The default Samsung email app that came with Marshmallow is most likely to be a bit dated at this point. I'll suggest trying Blue Mail, it's free and very popular with a long history. A more important aspect being it will have a more extensive feature set than the default email app, and most importantly it will have current security and privacy functionality.......
..........Depending on the email service it might be a matter where you just need to enter her email address and password and the app will automatically configure things for you. But if not, just use the ISP's recommended settings to manually set things up.

I must admit I have considered installing a third-party email client on both phones. I've no problem with setting up. We use Thunderbird on our PCs and I have to set that up with our ISP's settings as auto-configuration doesn't give the correct ones. This does seem to be the way to go but if I do install a third-party app it ideally needs to be simple and intuitive to use as my wife often seems to get in a mess with Thunderbird which I then have to sort out.

 

[svim]

Once you tap on 'Force stop' that quits the app, when you tried to send an email message you then started the app back up again. That's a normal sequence of events. You manually stopped the app, then started using it again.

The problems she's having could possibly be tied to the dated state of the email client app. Default apps tend to meet the needs of most users and not much more. Given she's having a problem if you're not able to get that default app straightened out, she either has to just accept things the way they are, or your options are to have someone else fix the problem for you (they will probably attempt to manually reconfigure her email account settings in the app's Settings/Preferences menu) or install a more robust email client app that's more capable and see if that helps.

 

[MoodyBlues]

Once you tap on 'Force stop' that quits the app, when you tried to send an email message you then started the app back up again. That's a normal sequence of events. You manually stopped the app, then started using it again.

Thank you for sparing me typing all that!

 

[MoodyBlues]

I definitely clicked 'Force Stop' on the email app in the App manager. The button didn't grey out but stopped responding. I expected once I'd stopped it a button to restart would appear but it didn't.

That's normal. Using 'force stop' never prompts to restart an app.

It clearly didn't stop the app because immediately afterwards I tried sending a test email from her phone to mine and it worked.

See @svim's excellent explanation.