How to Remove an Email Account From Your Phone Without Deleting It From the Server

If you need to switch phones, free up space, or stop a device from checking a particular mailbox, you can remove an email account from your phone's mail app without affecting the messages stored on the server. The key thing to check first is whether the account is set up as IMAP or POP3, because that determines what actually happens to your mail.

With IMAP, your phone only keeps a synced copy of what's on the server. Removing the account from your phone deletes that local copy, but every message, folder, and read or unread status stays exactly as it was on the server. With POP3, your phone may have already downloaded messages and removed them from the server, depending on how the account was configured. Removing the account at that point won't bring deleted mail back.

If you're not sure which type your account uses, it's worth checking your account settings before you remove anything, especially if you haven't backed up or don't access the same mailbox from webmail regularly.

On iPhone (iOS Mail App)

1. Open Settings and tap Mail.
2. Tap Accounts.
3. Select the email account you want to remove.
4. Tap Delete Account at the bottom of the screen.
5. Confirm by tapping Delete from My iPhone.

This removes the account, its mail, contacts, and calendars from your iPhone only. If the account is IMAP, everything reappears the moment you add the account back or log into webmail.

On Android

The steps are slightly different depending on whether the account was added through your phone's default Mail or Email app or through the Gmail app.

Default Mail or Email App

1. Open Settings on your phone.
2. Tap Accounts (sometimes listed as Passwords & Accounts or Users & Accounts, depending on your phone's manufacturer).
3. Select the email account you want to remove.
4. Tap Remove Account and confirm.

Gmail App

1. Open the Gmail app.
2. Tap your profile picture or initial in the top-right corner.
3. Tap Manage accounts on this device.
4. Select the account you want to remove.
5. Tap Remove account and confirm.

As with iPhone, this only removes the account from the Gmail app on that device. It does not touch anything stored on the mail server.

Before You Remove the Account

• If you only have the account set up on this one phone and you're unsure of the account type, log into webmail first and confirm your recent messages are visible there. If they are, it's safe to remove the account from your phone.
• If the account was set up as POP3 with an option to remove messages from the server after they're downloaded, assume that mail already downloaded to this phone may not exist anywhere else.
• Removing an account from your phone never deletes or changes anything on the server by itself: it's only a risk when the account was already configured to pull messages off the server on download, which is a POP3 behavior, not an IMAP one.

If you keep running into sync problems rather than wanting to remove the account outright, see How to Fix Email Not Syncing on Your Phone before you remove and re-add anything.