How to remove an email account from a phone without deleting the account
Maybe you got a new phone and you want to remove all your personal information from the old one before you give it away. Or there is a little used “junk mail” account taking up space. Good reasons to remove an email account from your phone! But how does it work? And what happens to the email account?
by Alyssa SchmittIt only takes a few taps to remove an email account from your phone
Will removing an email account from a phone delete the account?
First things first: If you are worried that deleting an email account from your phone will delete the account itself, worry no more. Your phone is simply the tool you use to check the emails – if you remove the email account, you will still be able to access the account on other devices, e.g., a new phone or your laptop. Just make sure you know your username and password so you can log in! To completely terminate your email account, you would have to follow the account deletion process required by your email service provider.
Removing an email account from your phone does remove all the emails and folders in that account from your phone. So, for example, if you remove your Gmail account from the iOS Mail app on your iPhone, you’ll no longer see the messages from that Gmail account in the Mail app. However, deleting an email account from your phone does not delete emails from the mail server.
Neverthless, if your email account is set up so that messages are deleted from the server after being fetched, as with some POP3 accounts, or if there is a time limit for how long emails are kept on the mail server, you might not be able to access all your old emails when you log into your email account on a new device. When in doubt, play it safe: Log into your email account on another device BEFORE you delete it from your phone and make sure everything you want to keep is there.
How do I remove an email account from my phone?
The process of removing email from your phone differs depending on whether you use an iPhone or an Android phone. Keep reading to find out:
There are several ways you might check email on your phone – through the Android Email app, for example, or through a dedicated app like the Gmail app or the mail.com Mail App. The process of removing an email account will differ slightly depending on which app you use. (And, as always, the exact steps may differ slightly depending on your phone model and which version of Android it runs.)
How to remove an account from your Android Email app
Do you use Samsung’s Email app to check emails on your phone? You can remove any of your email accounts from that app in just a few clicks. This is not the same as terminating the email, and you can always add it back to the Email app if you change your mind. Here’s how it works:
Open the Email app on your Android phone.
In your inbox, tap the three-bar icon in the upper left corner of the screen. A menu will open.
Tap the gear icon in the upper corner of the menu. The email accounts you have linked to the app will appear under Accounts.
Tap on the email account you wish to remove.
Tap Remove.
Confirm by tapping Remove in the pop-up window.
How to remove a Gmail account from your Android phone without deleting the account
To sign out of the Gmail app, you have to remove your entire account from your phone:
Open the Gmail app.
Tap your profile picture.
Tap Manage accounts on this device.
Select your account.
Tap Remove account.
Confirm by tapping Remove account in the pop-up window.
Remember, removing the account from your phone does not delete the account – you can still use it on your computer or other device. However, removing the account means you may be signed out of Google products (like Maps, Calendar, etc.) on this phone. So, if you intend to continue using Google apps on this specific device, you may have to have / add a different Google account to keep things running.
How to remove an email from the mail.com Mail app on your Android phone
If you use the mail.com Mail App on your Android phone, you already know how easy it is to add email accounts. You can also remove a mail account from your phone in just a few taps:
Open the mail.com Mail App.
Tap the three-bar menu in the upper left corner.
Tap the email account you wish to remove. The settings for that account will open.
Tap the three-dot menu in the upper right corner.
To remove the account from your phone, tap Remove Account.
Confirm deletion by tapping OK.
When you remove a mail.com account from our app, it is not permanently deleted. You can still log in at www.mail.com – and you can add the account to our app on any mobile device.
If you have signed into an email account in the iOS Mail app on your iPhone, e.g., a Gmail, Yahoo, or iCloud account, it is easy to remove it from your device:
Open your iPhone Settings.
Tap Mail and then Accounts.
Tap the email account you want to remove from your iPhone
Tap Delete Account.
Confirm by tapping Delete Account in the pop-up window.
This does not permanently delete the email account; you can still log into it on another phone or computer.
Removing an email account from your iPhone’s Gmail app
If you have installed the Gmail app on your iPhone to check your emails, follow these steps to remove an email account:
Open the Gmail app.
Tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
Tap Manage accounts on this device.
Tap Remove from this device.
Confirm deletion when prompted.
How to remove your mail.com email account from your iPhone
If you use the mail.com mobile app to check your emails on your phone, it’s easy to remove an email account from the app.
Remove an account from the mail.com Mail App for iOS:
In the app, tap the three-bar menu in the upper left corner.
Tap Edit Accounts.
A list of your email accounts will appear. Tap Edit.
Tap the red delete icon next to the account you wish to remove.
Tap logout to the right of the email address.
Confirm by tapping Logout.
The email account will be removed from the app.
Although you have removed your mail.com account from the app, it has not been permanently deleted. You can still log in at www.mail.com – or, if you change your mind, just add the address to the mail.com app again. The same applies if you delete the mail.com app from your iPhone – the email accounts will be removed from your phone, but the accounts themselves will not be terminated.
Pro tip: Deleting a POP3 or IMAP account from your iPhone’s Mail App
In some cases, it may not have been possible to automatically sign into a third-party email app in the iOS Mail app – so instead, you added it by entering the POP3 or IMAP settings. This is the case if you added your mail.com Premium account to the app, for example. A POP3 or IMAP email account can be removed from your iPhone using the same steps above (Settings > Mail > Accounts > Delete Account). And, as described above, the email account itself will not be permanently deleted. However, depending on your POP settings, you may lose any emails that were downloaded to the phone from the server. This happens if you did not select the “leave email on server” option when setting up the account. To be on the safe side, you should save important messages and anything else you want to keep to a separate location before removing the account from your phone.
Now that you know how to remove email from your phone, we hope you’ll leave us some feedback before you get started! And if you still don’t have an email account with mail.com, why not sign up for free today?
