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
    2022-06-10T22:16:31+00:00

    Regarding Microsoft support, I contacted them on Wednesday. They were actually very helpful. They remoted my laptop, checked the config of my Outlook account, and even created a second version of the account. For that second version, they waited while a full clean sync took place, and again the messages stopped at 10,000. They finally concluded that nothing in Outlook in general or my config specifically was imposing a limit, and I was convinced.

    Also, regarding the Bulk Mail issue, while I agree this is not specifically an issue for this thread, I do want to clarify what happened with me, since it may help understand the overall problem with mail synchronization. For me, I had left my laptop running with Outlook open for about 3 hours. Before I left it, I could see all my emails in the inbox (about 208k messages, 48k unread). Up to that point, the AOL spam folder online was synching to a folder called "Bulk Mail". When I returned to the laptop, the 10,000 limit was now in force, and spam messages were now synching to a new "Bulk" folder. The "Bulk Mail" folder was still there (in fact a few spam messages were in it as well), but since then it has remained empty and all new spam messages are now in the "Bulk" folder. Don't know if this helps support the argument that the 10,000 limit problem is with AOL/Yahoo, but I thought it might be important to note.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T22:21:25+00:00

    That does not in any way implicate outlook. And many of us have both confirmed what you observer (NOT what you concluded) whether by logging into AOL or using AOL's webmail. Also when deleting messages, the count goes down for a while then eventually goes back to 10,000

    .

    Someone posted a low level investigation that would point to AOL. They said that the app queried how many messages there were, and was given a count of 10,000. So it only got 10,000 messages. I wonder if they didn't do it to appear responsive, the way gmail (at least on android) only downloads a subset of your messages (1 month, 3 months, not sure). But there are some of us who count on having all the emails available for sorting, searching, etc.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T23:53:41+00:00

    Thanks

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-11T10:58:20+00:00

    Aol support have got back in touch and seem to be slightly less dismissive in their latest DM to me on Twitter (I had passed on the above information regarding the IMAP server):

    "Hi again, thank you for your patience while we reviewed your messages. Our engineers have been notified about your concern, will message you back in case they need additional details."

    I will continue chasing privately (and publicly if necessary) on Twitter in the hope we can resolve this.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-11T14:30:40+00:00

    Richard, I don't want to rain on your parade :-), but in the beginning I also got a response from Yahoo Customer care that engineering team was looking into it, then another asking the version of outlook for the engineering team, and, after 5 days of silence - old and friendly advice to update Outlook, and no more mention of engineering team. Let's hope you will do one better :-)

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