Can't assess messages

[autosound]

My inbox shows that I have 1287 messages, but when I go to my inbox there are no where near that many messages. Also there are only old emails from last week, when there was some from months ago that I hadn't deleted. And one last problem, in the unread folder, it says messages are in the inbox but they aren't, they either aren't there or they are in another folder. Has anyone else had this problem and/or knows how to fix it? (sorry can't spell today, I meant access the messages!)