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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".
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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)
Using classic Outlook for Windows in business environments
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I've tweeted something publicly - if anyone else wants to reply it may help put some pressure on AOL / Yahoo - link below:
https://twitter.com/Richard94115209/status/1535010359848886277
I'm not much of a twitter user either - but I think it is quite hard to get traction on a tweet. Adding a few hashtags sometimes helps - I'll publicly tweet something to AOL on the subject and see if anyone who has the same problem pipes up. I've also got someone at Apple looking into it - but I think they will conclude it's nothing to do with them.
I have the same problem with AOL mail. It started two days ago (June 7). I called AOL yesterday and spoke to a support agent. After much back and forth and his remoting my machine and poking around, he told me to contact Microsoft. I dutifully did so, and the Microsoft technician confirmed that Outlook was not imposing any limit on any folders. So, today I contacted AOL again. After a long and frustrating exchange with an agent, a technician, and finally a Supervisor, I got nowhere. None of them were aware of any changes made to AOL's software or systems. Rather, they just kept telling me that AOL has had a long-standing limit of 5,000 messages per folder (clearly not something ever enforced technically), and that I should create separate folders and move 5,000 or fewer messages to each to avoid this limit (not an acceptable solution for me at all). They couldn't explain why the 5,000 limit was never actually applied, or why it is 10,000 messages now. And, most frustratingly, they could not escalate my call to anyone in authority at AOL to actually help me. The best they could do was suggest I lodge a complaint online with AOL. I will do that, but I don't have high hopes.
I'm running Outlook for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2205 Build 16.0.15225.20172) 64-bit.
The idea that this might be a bug and not an intentional change is intriguing. I'm not an IT expert by any stretch, but I'm wondering why it isn't affecting everyone at the same time. Would they deploy a change to different servers at different times or something like that?
Thank you for you reply Richard.
The truth is I don't really know how to launch a Twitter campaign, I only joined Twitter a few weeks ago to express my support and admiration for what Elon Musk had said he was going to do. Otherwise I have no Twitter skills or experience. I slapped my conversation with Yahoo customer care there and pasted a few of their pathetic responses. No idea how to get others to participate
Thank you for your help with this.
As with another poster, I use Office 365:
Microsoft® Outlook® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2205 Build 16.0.15225.20172) 64-bit .