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
    2022-09-25T01:46:42+00:00

    Did you try reverting to the old name (I forget what was changed -- we added a prefix)? Maybe only the new one is screwed up. BUT you don't give me home for reducing it because I really didn't want to have so many folders to keep the main one at 10,000.

    Unless... did you try to work with your existing file, or delete it and start over? After a little more moving I was going to try that. Maybe something is screwed up in the file already. But if you did that, then other than that address (if you didn't do it), it's really broken and nothing WE do can fix it. Yahoo/AOL, OTOH, have to step up if they want to keep their customers.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-25T02:34:49+00:00

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-25T04:12:49+00:00

    Well they responded to "is it temporary" with "at the moment",

    That either means that they know about it and are working on it... or they didn't pay attention to what you said. I fear it's the latter.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-25T05:10:32+00:00

    Actually their first response said “at the moment”. I replied to ask “is it temporary?” but they didn’t answer my question until I replied again and included “@yahoo” in that reply.

    I am with you about fearing the latter.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-26T07:16:31+00:00

    OK, I moved about 21K files to three folders and because it was becoming unusable, decided to erase the OST on the old computer (but still the one I'm using), and CPU was moderate but it filled so that the inbox and those three folders matched the size in the web based AOL. Before that both were running constantly -- strangely the new PC with a much more powerful CUP with many more cores, was running higher and that version of windows listed outlook's use of power as very high. Dunno what it was doing but it didn't involve eithernet I/O.

    Note that before that neither had dropped after moving about 15K emails out of the inbox. Yet it was also missing many.

    Well it worked. And with lower CPU usage than when it was doing nothing. Gave me a scare when I noticed that it hadn't even started the sent messages, and then that started to grow. I left it in the sent messages, and looked back later and saw a lot less than was in the inbox, and thought, "now it's cycling", but then I noticed it was hte sent messages.

    So I decided to try deleting the mailbox on the newer, faster computer. Worked there too, and the power usage never got beyond moderate.

    BTW, my inbox is now sitting at a little over 38K.

    We'll see if it keeps working.

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