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

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.

0 comments

315 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-11-14T10:09:14+00:00

    Both Thunderbird and Outlook seem to exhibit the same behaviour.

    I can get all inboxes to download using export.imap.mail.yahoo.com but something then triggers a 2000 message limit (as shown on Outlooks message count) in each folder.

    Generally, the first "Send/Receive" after opening Outlook does it.

    Then another Send/Receive triggers a massive redownloading of the messages in excess of 2000.

    For me, it seems to be just Yahoo (rather than AOL which shares the same platform as far as I know).

    It's clearly something funny about the way the Yahoo mailbox responds to an IMAP mail client starting synchronising.

    On the positive side, I've been able to make PST file backups in Outlook during the times that all the messages were downloaded.

    I think Yahoo may not be fully committed to their email platform.

    I have to say Microsoft's outlook.com platform (as against the Outlook mail client) works much more reliably in my experience and that is where I'm planning to migrate to.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-11-14T08:23:31+00:00

    The export.imap.mail.yahoo.com trick works to download all emails (22k+) but when the download finished, thunderbird deletes all emails and starts again.

    Does somebody have the same issue?

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-23T08:20:52+00:00

    This has just become unusable. I tried to look up an email of an online order from last month, and it's not there. On one computer, I have one week, then back a year or two; the other goes back to the beginning of this month, a few emails from last month, then several years ago.

    I kept AOL and use outlook for the searching capabilities. PLUS I guess I've had this email address forever. But if I can't use it, what's the point? If this doesn't get better soon I'm going to look into moving to gmail and converting my $30/month AOL ID to a free one to catch emails until I change them (or keep it but move important emails to gmail or something). This is ridiculous.

    I never considered dropping it but it's just lost MAJOR functionality.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-20T17:12:52+00:00

    I also called 4 different email providers, two as a paid customer, & got unspeakable, useless replies and effort.

    What are the results of your deleting the yahoo account: Did it sync in completely, and are there more than 50,000 messages?

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2022-08-12T19:16:51+00:00

    I am using both a desktop and a laptop and the email 10,000 email problem is only on the laptop.

    Larry

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments