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: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-23T01:16:10+00:00

    Same issue with me. I thought I was crazy! I spent 3 hours on the phone between Microsoft and Yahoo. Pretty inept Yahoo support (Beyond Trust?). while Microsoft was more technically aware/savvy, after an hour of fishing around, they sent me to Yahoo. I won't speak about the dismal support of Yahoo but net/net, same issue. only see 10000 emails per mailboxes.

    the gmail account imap seems to work fine but maybe I have fewer emails than in Yahoo. looking forward to a solution....

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T21:34:04+00:00

    On both of my two PC's, I had set up two Outlook accounts, one using imap.aol.com and the other using export.imap.aol.com. So, 4 accounts, 2 with the export extension, 2 without.

    On one PC, the day this all started the export version account reset and maxxed out at 100k messages for a day or so, then reset again and stopped synching at about 26k. As new messages came in, they added to the total (slowly), but no further older messages would synch. This remained the case until today. As others have reported, my PC was running hot, so today I decided to delete the export version account. And since then the PC is much cooler and performance has improved significantly. Throughout this, the non-export version account has remained capped at 10k messages.

    On the second PC, the export version account remained fully synched to the server (with all 226k messages) until I checked it yesterday morning, when it was suddenly capped at 100k messages. I just checked it again before I wrote this, and it is still maxxing out at 100k. The PC is running cool and performance is normal. As with the first PC, the non-export version account has remained capped at 10k messages.

    Is anyone else having either all their messages synch, or a 100k max cap? Or, is everyone experiencing a perpetual attempted and failing synch?

    BTW, as Lemmy_Caution suggested, I am composing a complaint to lodge with Yahoo at:

    https://yahoo.uservoice.com/

    I'm not holding out much hope, but I am encouraging others to do the same in the hopes that someone might try to address this mess.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T20:58:19+00:00

    Has anyone tried the official Yahoo! desktop application from the Microsoft Store or the Mac App store?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T20:18:07+00:00

    I think that's correct and was going go say it myself -- I believe they see the name and can take different actions based on the different string -- not different servers,

    I think mine have stopped cycling, because every time I check they're in the same general size (it does go up for new emails, which did not happen with the 10K limit -- with that, as soon as one came in at the top, they tossed one at the bottom).

    However, it is spinning CPU 10-20%, and the Win10 box that reports it shows (task manager) as "very high" power usage for outlook. So much that I don't want to keep it running and keep either closing it or working offline. My old PC crashes often, and when I've felt the back, it's very hot, so I suspect those go together. (The new one I don't want to damage.)

    To summarize, my new PC stopped around 21K and change (actually it was 22,411 one or more days ago and I received more email than I deleted). So maybe it has been cycling but I've never seen it go low (after the first few days when I did see it down at/around 1000). My old PC, after deleting the OST (with outlook down), came up only to about 14K. After a few days I deleted it again and it eventually got up to 19K and change.

    I should mention with each post: This is AOL. Inbox actually a little over 60K.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T18:38:48+00:00

    Iso13818,

    I appreciate your analysis. export.imap and imap might resolve to the same server, but the function is not identical. The imap server still truncates my inbox and sent items to 10,000 items, while export.imap does allow more, but I have not been able to fully load my inbox due to recycling.

    Your theory does support the fact that the IMAP Subscribed folder function broke in Outlook last Thursday on the export.imap server while it has been broken in the imap server since the original changes were made back in June.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments