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)

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-06-17T18:20:42+00:00

    Thanks for all your hard work YanTeper, please add my name, Norman Altman (AOL and Yahoo)

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T00:30:20+00:00

    So this is clearly a MICROSOFT OUTLOOK issue of suddenly deciding to limit the number of emails to 10000, not a Yahoo or AOL issue, which is what Microsoft always does (blame the webmail provider). I have a few different AOL addresses, and a Yahoo address, and they all suddenly reverted to 10000 with no explanation whatsoever. Before figuring out this 10000 issue MYSELF by Googling and finding the entries here, I just wasted 2 hours talking to Microsoft support, they did what they always do and experimented with setting up a new profile and experimenting with that 'online/offline' toggle switch that says how many months you want to keep (some number of months or ALL) and in so doing they deleted my categories, screwed up my calendars, messed up the synching that I had with Apple and other Exchange calendars, and also now I only have 3500 in that famous inbox, not 10000. DO NOT experiment with changing the number of months of offline emails that you have available, as all of the above will happen to you. THANK GOD I still have the AOL emails in that webmail inbox so they aren't lost. But I have just had the worst Microsoft experience with two different people (the first line help desk buy, then his supervisor) completely messing up my setup. I begged them to start doing the basic job of sharing this information among themselves at the help desk so they don't ruin another person's weekend. It really is beyond......

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T01:40:36+00:00

    The same behavior occurs with ALL desktop clients formerly syncing from Yahoo email servers. YanTeper has clearly defined the issues.

    You need to follow all of the information here, and note that support for several other email applications has been just as incompetent as Microsoft's. Notably, even Apple users with Yahoo mail servers are also communicating the same problem.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T04:21:52+00:00

    I have the same issue using ATT / Yahoo Mail downloading to Outlook 2013. I was on vacation June 2-12 and did not open any email. My computer was shut down. When I returned, I had exactly 10,000 emails in my Outlook inbox. Overall, I went from about 43,000 emails (not counting new emails June 2-12), to around 37,000. (I do have sub-folders where I store some older emails.) I am wondering where all my messages have gone!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T04:56:31+00:00

    Hello, Yan. Yep, same problem. My Yahoo mail shows 26,000 messages in inbox, but only 10,000 appear in Outlook 365. I am using Windows 10 on a Lenovo T490s. The problem started a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like your complaint is the most likely to yield fruit, so please keep us posted.

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