Why is an IMAP Inbox Only Displaying 10,000 Items When There are Many More Emails on the Server?

Anonymous
2022-05-04T04:23:15+00:00

I have an IMAP email account that is hosted by AOL Mail, which I download into Outlook 365. The AOL Account has emails going as far back as 2015, and until recently all of those emails were visible (and searchable) through Outlook. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that I could no longer search for emails going back farther than 6 months ago. Those emails are still on the AOL server; I can see them if I use AOL's webmail interface (which is pretty mediocre). But they are no longer downloading into my IMAP inbox. Indeed, at the bottom of the inbox it now says I have 10,000 items. 

                                     [!\[\](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA

That's the maximum. If I delete say 100 emails, another 100 emails will download from the AOL server but the downloading will stop when I hit 10,000. (When new emails download from the account, older emails are deleted so I'm just about always at 10,000 items). The full set of emails remains on the AOL server.
In my IMAP Account Settings for this email account, I have the "Keep Mail offline" setting pushed all the way to the right at "All".
[!\\ I can't find any setting in Outlook that limits the number of emails. Nor does there appear to be any setting in the AOL account that limits 3rd party IMAP mailboxes to only 10,000 items (at least not one that I can find). New emails are downloading and syncing with the AOL server, so my connection settings appear to be correct.
Is there some kind of Registry setting that is limiting the number of items that will load into this email inbox? I used to have access to all of the emails that were on the AOL server. Is there any way to get that back? One last note. I deleted the AOL account from Inbox, rebooted and then reinstalled the AOL account. It still only downloaded 10,000 items in the IMAP inbox. Also I'm using the most recent version of Outlook 365.
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/e4efa42d-54c3-4fa7-b54a-ae7d93efb421?platform=QnA)](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA)

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-07-02T16:20:08+00:00

    While I'm happy to see some solution, I'm confused. What is this Aid4Mail? It looks like a third-party product that I don't have and am not anxious to have. Among other things, I'd be giving them access to all my email and my passwords, presumably.

    Oh, and it's a licensed product, looks like 3 variations, the lowest is $299/year. Google pointed to a download for free link, which is a free trial.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-27T16:03:14+00:00

    Please add my name as well: Gerhard Sollner, ******@verizon.net.

    I have 35,000 emails on the AOL server but only 10,000 will download. Had I know this was going to happen, I'd have archived all of 2021, which I can't do locally now. I appreciate the depth to which the contributors to this long thread have dug into this issue, and I'll watch this space for an eventual solution.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-23T04:20:19+00:00

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T22:48:15+00:00

    There is a close parenthesis and period at the end of that URL. I dropped it and used https://s.yimg.com/oo/mail/181669fc3946efc37e4daeda8712985daf888221/static/Yahoo_Aol%20IMAP%20Pagination%20and%20Mail%20Sync-7564bd8d996168f4b38eee1440784515.pdf and it opened.

    I see a few things there, none mentioning the registry, although I searched for MESSAGELIMIT in my registry and found what was mentioned.

    From that link it looks like mostly MESSAGELIMIT is returned from the server by a capability query:

    Message Limits

    The IMAP server will expose the maximum number of messages in a response as the capability, MESSAGELIMIT. IMAP server advertises PARTIAL and MESSAGELIMIT in its CAPABILITY list as shown below:

    C: 02 CAPABILITY

    S: * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 ENABLE OBJECTID CONDSTORE QRESYNC UIDONLY PARTIAL MESSAGELIMIT=500

    S: 02 OK Completed

    I DO see where the client can specify MESSAGELIMIT, but that appears to be only combined with UIDONLY. I guess if you want to change the regustry, restart outlook and try again, let us know if it works... and yes, 10000 is the value I have too. But I also notice it is for windows, not outlook. Wait, forget it, you and I both found UserPostMessageLimit for the key. That would have nothing to do with received messages. Found one other hit, in what looks to be a shadow of the same structure. So looked possible but now I'm convinced that it's not.

    And back to that PDF, the only mention of that MESSAGELIMIT coming from the client is combined with UIDONLY, so it would have to be using that new allegedly draft standard.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T12:16:00+00:00

    You will learn that the culprit here is not Outlook (don't we all love to hate Microsoft, but they are not at fault here) if you read through detailed explanations for the last 3 weeks in this forum.

    There is also a letter that I am about to sent to Yahoo/AOL corporate management on behalf of the impacted users. Do you want to add your name to it?

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