Bell Webmail - Cannot delete an email from my inbox

[MV]

Hello,

I having issue with a specific email, that I'm unable to delete and it keeps coming back.  its an auto-reply message from meeting invite.  I tried forwarding it to my wife's (bell.net) and its now doing the same thing to her email inbox.

I also am getting errors on my trash folder as well (unexpected error has occurred) and (webtop error)  can someone help us delete this problematic email in webmail.  

thanks

[Paul-K]

Why does my Bell WebMail Inbox show a (-1) new messages?  How did it get to that state and is it correctable? I have logged on and off multiple times to try to reset it.

[BellNick]

Hi there @MV 
Thank you for your post and welcome to the Community.
We'd like to take a closer look into this and have sent you a private message.
Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.
Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

[BellPatricia · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Paul-K, thanks for your post and welcome to the Bell Community.

That is strange for sure! Can you share when -1 first appeared beside your Inbox folder?

What type of device (make/model) & browser are you using (Chrome, Edge, Safari), and does this persist if you log in using a different device/browser? 

We also recommend that you try clearing cookies and caches, and then log back in to see if -1 still appears.

If you continue to have any trouble after trying those steps we would like to review this further, and will need to reach out to you via PM to gather a bit more information.

Keep the Community posted.

@BellPatricia 

[Paul-K]

Hi Patricia,

I have done the things you suggested... the problem remains... I noticed it on December 30th or thereabouts... It only appears when there are 0 unopened emails in my inbox so it could have occurred earlier. The problem occurs on my laptop when using either Edge (the original screen above) or Firefox. It also occurs when using Safari on my iPhone.  The only thing in common across these three different access points is your Bell Mail backend.  The iPhone is totally separate. Here's the iPhone screen: 

[BellPatricia]

Hi there @Paul-K, thanks very much for your reply.

We want to dig into this a bit deeper, and have sent you a private message. Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.

Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

- Patricia

[Shawgeenosh]

I am a retired Bell employee helping a neighbour who uses Bell Webmail who has one email message stuck in the Inbox that will not delete.  She has accessed the account through different browsers using different browsers (Chrome, Opera, Edge) - same thing.

[Adam-tech]

Considering the fact it's supposed to be a counter for unread messages only, I'd first have to assume it's caused by a corrupt or unrecognized value on one of the emails in your inbox (not something which would be visible on the surface)

The first obvious questions for understanding the nature of the problem haven't been addressed yet:

1. How many unread messages do you actually have?
2. If the value doesn't change based on how many unread messages you have, then what happens if you make a new folder and move the entire contents of your inbox there? 

That's the first step to troubleshooting this that I'd want to take. Forget about clearing the cookies and cache or signing out. If there's another system/device to try and you confirm the problem only exists on the first one, only then would the local files seem like the cause. I've worked in ISP tech support before and the only reason I would ever make someone delete their cookies was to rule it out as a culprit (there's a lot of settings stored in there for your convenience when revisiting the same sites). Usually you can clear stale page data with a simple page refresh, but Shift+F5 can perform an elevated refresh which deletes the cache for just the site you're on at the time (not relevant to this problem, but still very good to know about for troubleshooting other problems).

If your inbox is totally empty and you're still getting that -1 new messages indicator, then Bell support will probably need to escalate a ticket so someone can check out the account on the mail server end, or it'll reach someone already familiar with the exact cause. 

If moving everything to a different folder moves the indicator to that folder instead, then you know you're on the right track. It confirms an email you moved was responsible.

1. whether you have pages of inbox/folder contents or just a couple dozen emails, start moving emails back to your inbox in clusters (you decide how many at a time)
2. When the indicator is back on the inbox, reverse the process again -- move half that last cluster (or sizeable chunks of it) and keep shrinking the range the culprit email could be hiding in.
3. Once you've narrowed it down to just one email, make another folder to isolate it in. Then everything else you were moving around can be moved back to the inbox
4. At that point the problem being off your inbox just leaves the question of what to do with the email. If it's important enough to revisit later, you may as well rename the folder it's already isolated to so you can find it quicker in the future. Otherwise you should be able to delete it safely, followed by the associated folder (just in case of traces of corruption) and empty the trash.

Though it's very unlikely, it's entirely possible to have more than one email causing this issue. That's likely what's happening if you end up seeing -1 on both folders partway through the process of elimination. 

[Paul-K]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your suggestions... I will keep them in reserve as the problem was fixed around January 17th. I'm guessing that Bell manually reset the counter in my account. It has been accurate since then. Appreciate your problem sectionalization approach and will explore if there's a recurrence.

[brewsterblock]

I had a similar problem long ago and had a debate with Bell support online about it. I deleted an email and it (several actually) was received again. Bell said "impossible". Months later I found the problem. I had synched (actually OVER synched) my Gmail and Bell mail because I wanted to see both on my phone (do most of my work  on my PC) and wanted to see which I liked better on the phone. . I received everything twice on both sides. Any incoming mails to Gmail I also saw on Bell and vice-versa. So Message1 came in to my bell inbox destined for my Bell userid@sympatico.ca. But this was also read into the Gmail server as input from Bell. After deleting it on Bell, it came in again because Bell was reading all my incoming Gmail messages! So it was the same message with the same sympatico email address but the SECOND one was actually coming from Google Gmail, not Bell. Looked like the "deleted" email was UNDELETED. Not so. My bad. Still have the "problem" because I still haven't "unsynched" them.

[Izzy06]

Webmail will not sync across my devices. Whenever I read and delete messages on my iPad they continue to show up in the Inbox on my Mac desktop as Unread. The  problem started about three weeks ago. None of the settings on either device has been changed, and the problem is only one-way (i.e. if I read and delete messages on my desktop the changes are reflected on my iPad). Can anyone suggest a remedy for this? Thanks in advance.

[jackd]

I have a problem,  emails keep showing up a second time.  I receive mail 1 day,  maybe that same day or th next it shows up again.  Also messenger messages sometimes show up twice.  Might be time to get an Apple.

[BellPatricia]

Good afternoon @jackd,

Thanks for reaching out to the Bell Community.

We want to investigate further, and have sent you a quick Private Message so we can gather more information. Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.

Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

- Patricia

[justaguy]

I am missing a lot of email I was expecting to receive during the past two weeks.  My Inbox is also showing (-1) unread messages.  I would like to know what has gone wrong.  Is the email somehow not being filtered correctly?  Can Bell correct this and also retrieve the missing email from their servers?

[BellPatricia]

Good afternoon @justaguy,

Thank you for reaching out to the Bell Community.

Can you please clarify if you access Bell Webmail through a browser such as Chrome, or if you're using a third party email client such as Outlook, and what type of device you have?

We also recommend checking out the different suggestions in the thread above, and let the Community know if this is still happening afterwards.

- Patricia