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
    2022-06-10T22:07:46+00:00

    Good find Richard, I will join you there

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T20:13:31+00:00

    The reason I suspect Outlook/Office 365 is that with Yahoo--who maintains the actual emals--all of my emails since 2016 can be accessed on Yahoo; they simply are not being downloaded to outloook, either by Outlook and/or Yahoo.(?)

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T18:30:08+00:00

    It has been more than sufficiently demonstrated on this thread that the root of the problem is IMAP Servers recent change, not Outlook

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T18:28:22+00:00

    Hi AG 522

    I think most people on this thread will benefit more if we do stay focused on how to get Yahoo/AOL to fix the 10000 msgs limit, which is a major inconvenience for all of us, if not worse than that.

    Presence of the Bulk folder does not seem to a problem of the same magnitude for most of us, so I would like to ask everyone to please stay focused.

    Thank you

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T17:51:26+00:00

    Sry to stray off topic. Noted it bc I thought the timing was odd. Just found the below from 2018 which parallels what has happened to me, so prob then unrelated to the topic at hand. I may unsubscribe the Bulk folder.

    Yahoo/AOL users w/ Thunderbird also experiencing the same 10000 limit per Reddit. 

    Ty to everyone trying to get to the root of the issue.

    AOL Spam Goes to Bulk Folder

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/aol-spam-goes-to-bulk-folder/0b449c61-5fc6-4c46-8248-36d79fb3f4ee   I use Outlook 2010 as my mail client for all my various email accounts (AOL, Google, MS). I use AOL's filters to identify spam, which works great. I *never* saw the spam emails. Starting last week (9/16/2018), those spam emails have been showing up in the Outlook Bulk folder for my  AOL account. What happened and how can I go back?

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