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
    2022-06-10T04:13:15+00:00

    Thanks, Richard. I have replied to your tweet to add my support.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T05:42:11+00:00

    I have the same problem with a Yahoo email account. Upon debug it is definitely a server problem.

    I used OpenSSL to directly access the Yahoo IMAP server so that I could see the responses generated by the Server. There is an IMAP command that queries the number of messages in a folder. The response returned by that query is 10000. I am certain that my Inbox has more than 10000 messages because I can still view the older messages using the Web based mail interface. So the server is returning a response that is incorrect and this cannot be blamed on the client.

    In detail the commands used to recreate the behavior are as follows (running from a Ubuntu shell from Windows Subsystem for Linux)

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

    tag login <email_address> <secure_mail_key>

    tag SELECT Inbox

    tag STATUS Inbox (MESSAGES)

    tag logout

    and the response to the penultimate command is

    * STATUS "Inbox" (MESSAGES 10000)

    tag OK STATUS completed

    Note that <secure_mail_key> is not the email account password but is the randomly generated App mail password that can be generated from Yahoo mail account settings.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T08:25:41+00:00

    I will try passing this on to AOL technical support that I have contacted via Twitter DM. They haven’t been particularly helpful though.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T12:54:02+00:00

    I have read this long thread discussing the sudden 10,000 limitation on the number of emails that can be viewed in outlook including Office 365.

    I began having the problem with my Office 365 yesterday, June 9, 2022, at about 4:00 pm EST.

    I receive my service from AT&T Yahoo.

    Happened suddenly with all three of my computers.

    I of course contacted AT&T yahoo technical support. However, they claim it is a Microsoft/Office 365 issue.

    However, while it is not difficult to understand why AT&T; Yahoo; Verizon, et al, might want to put a throttle on the the number of emails we receive, clearly Office 365 would have no such interest.

    Or, might just be a programmer's glitch somewhere; but, whatever, it is a serious problem for business and legal users, so hope that the powers that be will step up to the plate.

    PS. I should add that AT&T technical support indicated, as I recall, that AT&T uses Verizon servers(?)

    PPS. In addition, it would be helpful if Office 365 would give us some support.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T13:29:20+00:00

    Hi Richard Williams

    I replied to your tweet.

    We have so many people responding here, I wish we had all these complaints where Yahoo and/or AOL could see them

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