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: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-20T22:26:44+00:00

    I had similar results when deleting the AOL OST. It is constantly syncing but gets nowhere other than sometimes overheating my PC (other times it shows doing it but non CPU). Less emails than the one that I didn't clear, never noticed it going back to 1000; isn't even downloading pictures (well, HTML), That PC is sitting around14K inbox messages; the other one is around 23K, I have around 60K on mail.aol.com.

    So deleting the OST made it a little worse, although it seems to be doing nothing (but showing syncing). No, just checked, 13% CPU and getting hot, will have to stop it again. Neither are getting more (but new emails do show up and unlike the original 10K limit, new emails don't bump off old ones. This is not a limit, something is terribly wrong. Different numbers, not round numbers, and climbing with new mail.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-21T04:36:58+00:00

    Well, for what it's worth:

    My Outlook for Mac client was operating without issue (except that Bulk never updates) until earlier today, when I installed Outlook on a second laptop to see how that behaved. Now both systems are in a loop resyncing although both appear to be getting all the messages. It's just that once they've downloaded everything, they start over. This seems like a bug in the Yahoo IMAP server telling the client that messages are new/changed (though the "read" status of individual messages seems to be preserved).

    I'm not currently seeing any limit as to what's downloaded. Outlook gets all of the messages. But I wonder if my ISP is going to complain about my Internet usage.

    I have switched off the second laptop and will leave the original on overnight.

    Given the number of folks here that are having this or similar issues, we can only hope that Yahoo will wake up and realise they have a problem. I'd think that they'd be seeing suddenly very large outbound traffic volume and that this would get someone's attention.

    Time to investigate other email providers ...

    Was this answer helpful?

    3 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-21T11:52:14+00:00

    I spoke to Yahoo email support on Friday. The first person I spoke to knew nothing about the email limit and referred only to her script. I asked her to speak to the manager, and apparently, the manager knew all about the limit. He told the agent (who told me) that it's for security purposes because Yahoo does not support third-party apps like Outlook. I was told to use the YahooMail App on my phone and access Yahoo mail directly through my web browser on my computer.

    I asked if she could lodge a complaint about this policy because I, like everyone else on this message thread, would prefer to use Outlook. She gave me a link to the feedback page. I left a complaint. I don't expect it to change anything. But maybe if enough of us complain about the email limit, they'll do something. This is the link https://yahoo.uservoice.com/

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T02:12:53+00:00

    Tried wiping out the one I did before. This time it's at 19.456 and holding.

    And emails read or deleted on one PC are not syncing to the other.

    This is bull.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T18:07:55+00:00

    I have done a little more digging this morning. My findings:

    • Setting up Apple's Mail app on a MacBook Pro and accessing my Yahoo-hosted email produces results similar to what I see in Outlook, though Mail seems to resync less often. But it does resync spontaneously, downloading the entire mailbox. I think this can be used to deflect Yahoo's assertion that it's an Outlook problem. I plan to test other email clients but haven't had time.
    • My inbox has about 23,000 messages and eventually they do all get downloaded. But the mail clients (Outlook and Apple Mail, on different systems) resync multiple times per day, redownloading the entire lot.
    • export.imap.mail.yahoo.com and imap.mail.yahoo.com now both resolve to the SAME IP address:

    % nslookup

    > **imap.mail.yahoo.com**

Server:		192.168.0.1

Address:	192.168.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:

imap.mail.yahoo.com	canonical name = jimap.imap.mail.yahoo.com.

jimap.imap.mail.yahoo.com	canonical name = jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net.

**Name:	jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net**

**Address: 98.137.27.103**

**Name:	jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net**

**Address: 67.195.228.138**

> **export.imap.mail.yahoo.com**

Server:		192.168.0.1

Address:	192.168.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:

export.imap.mail.yahoo.com	canonical name = jimap.imap.mail.yahoo.com.

jimap.imap.mail.yahoo.com	canonical name = jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net.

**Name:	jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net**

**Address: 98.137.27.103**

**Name:	jimapinternal.imap.mail.g03.yahoodns.net**

**Address: 67.195.228.138**
    • Connecting directly to look at the IMAP4 responses shows that both return MESSAGELIMIT=10000. This shouldn't be too surprising since they both resolve to the same IP address.

    openssl s_client -connect export.imap.mail.yahoo.com:993 -crlf -quiet

    a1 login ******@cousins.org xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    a1 OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 ID MOVE XYMHIGHESTMODSEQ UIDPLUS LITERAL+ CHILDREN UNSELECT X-MSG-EXT OBJECTID IDLE ENABLE UIDONLY X-ALL-MAIL X-UIDONLY LIST-EXTENDED LIST-STATUS SPECIAL-USE **MESSAGELIMIT=10000** X-MESSAGEPAGELIMIT=10000 PARTIAL APPENDLIMIT=41697280] LOGIN completed

    openssl s_client -connect imap.mail.yahoo.com:993 -crlf -quiet

    a1 login ******@cousins.org xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    a1 OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 ID MOVE XYMHIGHESTMODSEQ UIDPLUS LITERAL+ CHILDREN UNSELECT X-MSG-EXT OBJECTID IDLE ENABLE UIDONLY X-ALL-MAIL X-UIDONLY LIST-EXTENDED LIST-STATUS SPECIAL-USE MESSAGELIMIT=10000 X-MESSAGEPAGELIMIT=10000 PARTIAL APPENDLIMIT=41697280] LOGIN completed

    • Selecting INBOX returns what looks like a valid UIDVALIDITY value. This is used by clients to detect changes in the internal message IDs. Assuming the server always returns 1, this tells the client that the UID values for the messages have not changed (and therefore a client's local copies are valid). However, something is causing clients to want to resync everything.

    a2 select INBOX

    \* 10000 EXISTS

\* 0 RECENT

\* OK [**UIDVALIDITY 1**] UIDs valid

\* OK [UIDNEXT 231430] Predicted next UID

\* FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded $Junk $NotJunk)

\* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded $Junk $NotJunk)] Permanent flags

\* OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 130458]

\* OK [MAILBOXID (1)] Ok

a2 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed; now in selected state

    MESSAGELIMIT is documented as an extention to IMAP4 but it is still in DRAFT status:
    https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-extra-imap-messagelimit-00.html

    My guess is that the switch bacl several months ago to export.imap.mail.yahoo.com was some kind of temporary rollback, and what we're seeing now is the same as what was originally reported since the two now seem to be the same servers.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments