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
    2022-06-21T22:52:45+00:00

    Forgot to mention, I also found this in that PDF:

    Limited View Mailbox

    By default, Yahoo/Aol IMAP servers will limit the maximum number of messages accessible on the mailbox. Users can configure the maximum number of messages through their mail settings on the web. Limited view will support IMAP protocol compliant message sequence numbers. Although clients can use both MSN and UID based commands in this mode, they are encouraged to use UIDs as much as possible. For large mailboxes, an IMAP client in the limited view will only have access to the top of the mailbox or the largest UIDs in the mailbox. The following examples will demonstrate the server responses to various client requests.

    I went to mail.aol.com, found options, then mail settings. But I didn't find anything like what they are descrining.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T22:31:09+00:00

    I do not believe that this is strictly a Microsoft issue. I have the same issue on my MacBook running the Mac version of office 365 and on my iOS device with a native email. Neither of those have registry values that limit the number of email I believe. All three experienced this problem about the same time

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T22:28:22+00:00

    That is an interesting observation. The url you provided takes me to an error page though. What about MacOS machines that have the same problem with Yahoo/AOL. Where could this change possibly come from? Maybe this is a mechanism Yahoo/AOL uses to control the limit, but it did not set any limit before. I also did no hear any Hotmail or Gmail users complaining about message limit. Are you willing to try updating that? and what do you update it to?

    Please report the results

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T20:16:23+00:00

    I may have missed it, but has anyone looked at the Windows registry? After reading the technical report about IMAP protocols ("Yahoo/Aol IMAP Pagination and Mail Sync" - see https://s.yimg.com/oo/mail/181669fc3946efc37e4daeda8712985daf888221/static/Yahoo_Aol%20IMAP%20Pagination%20and%20Mail%20Sync-7564bd8d996168f4b38eee1440784515.pdf), I searched my registry for "MESSAGELIMIT" and I see references to "0x00002710 (10000)", where 2710 is the hex equivalent for 10,000. See screenshot below. So I'm wondering if manually changing the registry key to a higher value is a suitable workaround.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-21T19:24:05+00:00

    Yes please!

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