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
    2022-09-25T01:30:54+00:00

    Yes despite all the conjecture on what new rules may be, IMAP is still malfunctioning. I trimmed my AOL Inbox down to 8900 messages, which is the total of Read + Unread. The sync ran for hours, then stopped and reverted at a total of 8700. This abruptly deleted all as usual, reducing the Inbox to 500 and starting over.

    And while this slow sync runs all the time, heating up and reducing hardware life, it is impossible to navigate and search in the local email client. That would be the reason why we want Outlook and other local clients. This resource hog also slows the sync of my Outlook Exhange account which used to be instantaneous.

    So even giving in to a 10,000 message limit does not help. The Customer Service agents across all providers give invalid and ineffective replies, because Yahoo talks to nobody, but they do act like something has gone wrong.

    There was some prior input here from users with some inside-Yahoo knowledge. Is there any real information on this disruption?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-24T20:00:51+00:00

    2 folders, down to 48K on AOL. Outlook has shot up and shows about 42K on one and 45K on the other, still constantly spinning the CPU claiming to be syncing, but no ethernet activity. And while I am getting new mail eventually if I leave it in that state, it is not detecting deleted messages. I marked something SPAM on AOL, neither has deleted it. Messages deleted on one show on AOL as gone but not on the other PC (same for read).

    And SOME (not all) of the messages moved to folders still show in the inbox -- the one with 42K has most of them still there. They are in the folder too. They are gone from the inbox on AOL, and mostly gone on the other PC.

    I'll keep working on folders, and maybe also try to rebuild the OST on the old PC.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-23T22:18:35+00:00

    Just moved 6877 emails (2007-2012) to a new folder. One PC has them all; the other still has the old name (2007-2010 -- I changed the name when I saw the count). The old PC only has some of them so far and the original inbox still has many. It also now has 45,000 and change emails! Bet they don't stay. And it's still cycling, but a while ago it stopped going back down all the way, but it still was dropping them.

    (I found I could check then shift click to select a a range of emails on AOL (web, not using the app). It's a pain, and at some point I'll prob'ly copy (NOT move) the back ones to a PST. Not that I don't trust them, but I DO NOT TRUST THEM.

    With a little under 55K left in the inbox, I'll prob'ly need 5-10 more folders. The good news, as I suspected, as long as they're in the AOL live OST, a search of all folders finds in both the inbox and the date ranged inbox. If I move to a PST I'd have to open and search all PSTs, so I'll keep them on AOL but back them up in PSTs.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-23T19:26:34+00:00

    You aren't kidding. This drove me crazy too! I remember the 10000 email limit issue, and moving to the export.imap.mail.yahoo.com fixed that, but a few days ago, my inbox (33K), sent items (11K), and a few other folders just continuously dropped to 2000 messages and resync'd.

    I decided to use this issue to force me to clean up my inbox and sent items, putting older messages that mean something into folders for future searches if necessary.

    Now, all of my folders are under 5K messages and things are working normally.

    Half glass full...

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  5. 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.

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