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What does "Remove [GMail] Account" on iPad really do?

My Gmail account is accessible on my antedeluvian iPad, but I would like to remove it from that device because of security reasons.


In Settings, there is the option "Remove Account" for Gmail.


That only removes the account information from this particular device, right?


Because I do not want to lose my Gmail account as such: I want to keep using it on other devices.


Thank you for guidance!

Posted on Jan 26, 2022 3:54 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 26, 2022 4:10 AM

Removing a Mail account from your iPad removes both the account details and any downloaded email from the device itself. Removing the account from the iPad does not directly impact any other devices - or any email that is still stored on your Mail providers email servers.


As such, if your iPad is accessing your email using the IMAP protocol, all your email resides on the Mail server itself. Deleting the account from your iPad will only delete the locally stored copy - not the server copy - and you will not lose access to any email accessed from other devices.


When setting-up email on your iPad, using the native Mail App, the account will default to using IMAP. If instead you have manually set-up the account to use the older POP3 mail protocol, the answer is less straightforward. Unless you made a deliberate effort to use POP3, you can dismiss this complication from the equation.


If you wish to remove a Mail account from your iPad, just ensure that you use the Delete Account option from Mail Settings. If you delete individual mail messages, you will also delete the server copies of any messages that you manually delete - which, from your description, is precisely what you are attempting to avoid.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 26, 2022 4:10 AM in response to veskuliini

Removing a Mail account from your iPad removes both the account details and any downloaded email from the device itself. Removing the account from the iPad does not directly impact any other devices - or any email that is still stored on your Mail providers email servers.


As such, if your iPad is accessing your email using the IMAP protocol, all your email resides on the Mail server itself. Deleting the account from your iPad will only delete the locally stored copy - not the server copy - and you will not lose access to any email accessed from other devices.


When setting-up email on your iPad, using the native Mail App, the account will default to using IMAP. If instead you have manually set-up the account to use the older POP3 mail protocol, the answer is less straightforward. Unless you made a deliberate effort to use POP3, you can dismiss this complication from the equation.


If you wish to remove a Mail account from your iPad, just ensure that you use the Delete Account option from Mail Settings. If you delete individual mail messages, you will also delete the server copies of any messages that you manually delete - which, from your description, is precisely what you are attempting to avoid.

What does "Remove [GMail] Account" on iPad really do?

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