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
    2022-06-23T14:15:50+00:00

    So after denying it and blaming the mail client, now they say it was a "feature". For them, or for us? Is there a way to opt out of that feature?

    I do need to point out that I see no evidence from that post that AOL said that. Looks like the poster is reporting it, and as evidence, the poster has a screen shot (so no proof what it is and where it came from, and even ignoring that, there is no statement to match the post. Looks like AOL support asking for someone to contact them to investigate this problem.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-23T15:27:24+00:00

    Maybe he is referring to the below reply as 'evidence' since AOL escalated tech support claimed it was 'working as intended?' https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253810183?page=3 

    The mail list discourse thread keyword 'messagelimit' is interesting.

    Seems to echo some of our respective concerns:

    https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?q=messagelimit&f_from=Timo%20Sirainen 

    https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?q=messagelimit

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-melnikov-imap-partial-04

    It seems affected users are now "IMAP PARTIAL" /Limited Mode? Default

    Partial

    The Yahoo/Aol IMAP server supports the IMAP PARTIAL allowing clients to walk through a mailbox without using sequence numbers.

    Clients should first fetch MESSAGELIMIT capability and keep the message requests below the server announced MESSAGELIMIT.

    UID Mode

    The clients will be able to fetch and operate on all messages on the mailbox using UIDs. 

    This mode is enabled/activated by enabling the “UIDONLY" extension.

    All Mail (Experimental)

    The Yahoo/Aol IMAP server supports an “All Mail” folder that lists all messages in a user's mailbox. IMAP Clients can use IMAP CONDSTORE & QRESYNC queries to identify new messages, updates and deletes across the entire mailbox.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-24T03:05:36+00:00

    UPDATE: I changed the Windows registry key data values to something higher than 10000 (decimal) but it didn't have any affect. As a workaround, I thought I would move some of the Inbox mail items (using AOL webmail) to the Archive folder and then let it sync to Outlook so that I could move the emails to an offline PST file. This was a pain in the neck because of AOL's clumsy webmail interface, as I could only move just one or two days' worth of emails at a time. Then I sat back and watched Outlook do its sync thing, and guess what --- the sync stopped once the Archive folder in Outlook reached 10,000 emails.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-24T03:16:46+00:00

    The point is that AOL Product Report responded with a request to send information to either their Twitter or Facebook social media accounts. I went ahead and sent a tweet to AOL and they responded soon after asking for my email address, and they said they would pass along my comments to their Engineering team. Here is what I sent to AOL's Twitter address (for whatever good it will do):

    "Stop limiting 3rd party email applications to the most recent 10,000 messages! This change in your software was implemented without prior notice and is a disservice to users of AOL like myself who have been AOL users for over 30 years. This change in your software makes it impossible to sort and search for emails older than two months, as the online AOL Mail client is insufficient for this purpose. I and many other AOL users take great offense to AOL's unilateral and unannounced change to its software that limits 3rd party email applications to a maximum of 10,000 viewable emails. Your new email format does nothing to mitigate the damage caused to your user base. AOL must reverse this change immediately! This is a serious matter which must be elevated to AOL top management at once. The problem has been confirmed to originate with recent changes to AOL/Yahoo IMAP protocols and not with the 3rd party email applications. Your AOL users insist you take immediate corrective action! See details at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook\_com/forum/all/why-is-an-imap-inbox-only-displaying-10000-items/6d15de5f-9047-4b41-9b58-1d8345bbd002"

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-26T19:40:22+00:00

    Hi! Thank you to everyone who is addressing this issue. It is VERY disturbing to me! I had about 50,000 emails on Outlook 365. It is the latest version. One day I opened Outlook and watched my inbox number go down to less then 10,000. It does not even go up to 10,000. I have no emails prior to 1/14/22 in my Outlook inbox. But on my Verizon AOL email site on the web, I have over 58,000 emails.

    Please add my name to the letter if you have not already sent it. My name is Kathy Schoffstall.

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