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
    2022-11-14T18:41:50+00:00

    AOL and the outlook program,

    I had moved messages into separate folders and was down to around 45K, it was stable for a while then I caught it cycling again (a few times recently). One of my PCs locked at some number and wouldn't move back up -- restarting outlook didn't help. So I deleted the .ost again and it built up.

    This time I moved more messages, down to about 25K. Seemed ok, but then I noticed one was climbing... down. I closed outlook and reopened it, it was back at the ~25K instantly (guess I caught it before they saved it), and it's stayed there (AFAIK a few days). But I still don't trust them.

    I've had this ID since the 90's and hate to have to change it. I'm also one of the idiots who pays for it (originally I kept the paying account so my parents could get help -- they needed a lot of hand holding), but for now I'm still paying. I am getting some discounts/freebies that more or less cover it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-19T16:17:12+00:00

    Since I posted that, since it was stuck, I deleted my OST and let it start again. It all came back. I've since caught it recycling at least two more times.

    UNBELIEVABLE.

    And note that some things can be lost when you rebuild. If you have older emails with html that requires outside pages to execute, the senders don't keep those forever, so they might not be readable after the rebuild; just unresolved links.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-07T11:35:47+00:00

    When the export.imap.mail config stopped working properly a week ago, I changed my servier back to imap.mail.yahoo.com . Everything repopulated in the folder properly. However, I had all folders broken up into 10,000 emails or less well prior to that when this whole issue first started 6+ months ago. The latest Windows cumulative update caused the Outlook profile to request repopulation of all emails, and when I saw that I thought something had gone wrong again on Yahoo's end. This was simply the Windows update which affected the Office and Outlook products.

    Anyway, it's all working again ... for now.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-10-07T02:23:25+00:00

    All done. 39,064, all there (matches the sum of the read and unread emails on mail.aol.com). Was about to say there was 1 less in outlook and likely something hadn't updated yet, but as I was about to type that, one more came in. A new one. Still no clue why it emptied out and filled up again. Also means that for a while I was missing most of my messages so I couldn't search for them.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T22:54:57+00:00

    Click in the box at the top of the range, scroll down (use the scroll bar), shift-click in a box at the bottom. You can move them all.

    If you grabbed more than 1000 it will tell you that it only took the first 1000 messages.

    At some point it looked like I had double messages but it either cleared up eventually, or did when I rebuilt my OST.

    It doesn't seem that it took the first 1000 as I had gaps, but eventually I got the whole range. I created a folder a year at a time, and based on the size, added another year to it, and when done, renamed for the included range.

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