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
    2022-10-04T19:47:08+00:00

    It is not a "hack". Below is the Yahoo help page that documents the setup.

    https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/download-email-yahoo-mail-third-party-sln28681.html

    The problem is that the "export" server has been broken for a couple of weeks, so I am back to the regular IMAP server and the 10,000 message limit. The Yahoo support people are clueless, and I think it is time to get another letter to the Yahoo CEO and CTO to alert them to these unresolved issues.

    The App Password functionality broke around the same time, so I suspect these issues might all be related.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T19:55:57+00:00

    My Yahoo mail only has 5K emails using export.

    How do we reach CEO etc at Yahoo? I haven’t been able to get past those people on the phone even when I asked for an engineer

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T20:12:01+00:00

    The server being broken sounds right, I am having more problems than I care to list.

    I have hesitated making this suggestion but as an attorney I am wondering about having interested parties from this group retain a class action lawyer to look into and write letters to AOL and Yahoo threatening them with suit if this is not resolved. I imagine for a reasonably priced firm to research this and send such a letter would require a retainer in the $15,000 to $20,000 range. I could assist in finding and vetting a firm and would pledge $1,000 to the fund to get it started. There could be many complications in attempting to set this up but I thought the idea should be thrown on the table.

    Alternatively, I have wondered about passing the hat to retain a respected IT/email specialist who might be able to take a look at this at the technical level some of you amazing folks have gotten into and be able to reach out to them in the language they understand. I would make the same financial pledge.

    A few action ideas to kick around, wondering at some point if we attempt to organize a zoom call.

    Alan

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T20:35:21+00:00

    What would you sue for? For most of the people here, this is a free service. What are the damages when something you get for free stops working?

    I pay so I get premium support, which means I was able to call support (before the alternate URL was provided) who assured me that there was nothing wrong. Worth every penny. (They told me that outlook and third party mail clients are not supported; this after I set them up years ago following the instructions AOL provided, and later, when they went to that app password, followed their instructions for how to get the apparently unsupported apps to get in.)

    And I went to outlook years ago because of the superior searching ability, and likely some other things.

    Note that after I got my inbox down below 40K by moving years of data to other folders (which are in the same mailbox so my mailbox-wide searches find things there). AND deleted my OST (with outlook down) and let it rebuild, I'm getting all my messages. AND it stopped constantly syncing as it was doing, overheating my PCs. For now. It had also been fixed around 80K when I switched to the new URL (and that caused a rebuild too).

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T22:22:13+00:00

    [Sorry for the long post. If you want to skip my comments/info, please go to the bottom and see recommendation in red for someone posting our complaints directly on AOL site, and letting us know the link so we all can jump in and echo the problems]

    Perfect timing Alan. I was just getting ready to post below information, and saw your suggestions. I assume class action is possible because many/most users are paying for "Premium" service (??).

    And I personally would be interested in retaining expert and/or at least holding Zoom, etc., and would chip in as well.

    I'm concerned that we're not "united" enough to have any impact on the higher ups, and despite having 26 pages of Replies, and 4,821 Views as of today, we're on an Outlook forum and may not even be on Yahoo/AOL's radar.

    Also, we haven't attempted any "organized" communications/protests since some of us signed on to a letter sent to the CEO's a while back, and I don't know that it ever was received, because the last post I can find from the author, YanTeper, was Aug. 12th, saying:

    To my great embarrassment the letter to Yahoo Corporate office returned again. Does anyone know if they moved the HQ from Sunnyvale (I have sent it to 701 First Ave) or maybe they have agreement with USPS not to deliver customer mail :-( Does anyone have a reliable address for Yahoo Inc HQ?

    Anyway, below is my original post (prior to seeing suggestions about class action, etc.) :

    ======================================================

    Since we're all in agreement that this isn't an Outlook "problem", I thought it might be helpful to see if people were posting on Yahoo/AOL forums and give our input there as well.

    Came across: https://aol.uservoice.com/ (I presume Yahoo has similar), and the email forum is https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886

    Very annoying that the directory of Postings doesn't show dates (without opening the individual posting).

    Also, in most cases, there are only 1 or 2 Comments because the status tends to be "Comments are closed".

    But there are a ton of rantings about excess Spam, 3rd party app password problems, and as far as the IMAP/limit problem, I specifically found a Post from a couple of weeks ago : https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886-aol-mail/suggestions/45718630-imap-folder-limit-100k-emails-a-bad-idea

    I've pasted it below, and unfortunately, it's ranked 16th in priority, with the only comments being from the original poster. This was after a response from "AdminProduct Support (Product Support, AOL). (They probably closed Comments right afterwards).

    Amazingly, these Support people said they're aware of the problem and working on it. Meanwhile, they said to use webmail or AOL app, or limit folders to less than 10K. (The Poster wasn't happy, because his original concern was 100K, and he pointed out that 10K is ridiculous, because you can only move 1 or 2,000 emails at a time).

    16th ranked

    imap folder limit 100k emails a bad idea

    Currently export.imap.mail.aol is limited to 100k. this is new. this is a huge problem for MANY of us PAID users that have way more than that 100k per folder. used to be 1M limit. that is ok. PLEASE change it back because many of us have many folders that exceed the limit and need to be able to offload our emails to our own local servers, and third party programs.

    i also tried to create new folders to get each folder under 100k BUT the copy function limits you to moving 1000 emails at a time (that is anotehr suggestion). avalonavshared this idea  ·  Sep 20, 2022  ·Responded  ·  AdminProduct Support (Product Support, AOL) responded  ·  Sep 20, 2022 Hi there. Our team is aware of this issue and is working to have it resolved. Try using our AOL app and webmail to access your account or redistribute your emails to less than 10K per folder.

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    avalonavcommented  ·  September 20, 2022 2:48 PM  · 

    EMAIL IS CRITICAL TO DOWNLOAD VIA IMAP!!

    WE CANNOT REDISTRIBUTE EMAILS IN BULK BECAUSE THE COPY FUNCTION LIMIT IS ABOUT 2000 EMAILS. So there is no reasonable time efficient was to redistribute large numbers of emails!!

    =============================

    My suggestion is that somebody from our group go to https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886 and post about the problems with IMAP, Export, password, Bulk, etc.

    Since the problem is across Apple and multiple 3rd party email apps, I assume we'd all agree to omit the fact that we're using Outlook.

    Then immediately post the Link from your AOL posting on this forum so the rest of us can quickly go and add additional Comments, or at least click "Critical"... and there's also a "VOTE" button so we can get it ranked high.

    Thanks, Norman

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