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
    2023-03-13T16:10:28+00:00

    Are the yearly folders you moved emails into synced too or did you create them in outlook and never sync them with AOL? I created mine on yahoo and used yahoo to do the move and left them syned. I also made 4 per year and won't make a bew one till I havd a full quarters worth of messages to move into it just once. That way once the index for that folder is built, it should requiredand maintenance and easilyis synced between my various client apps. I haven't seen any additional load on my pc (win10 pro workstation) caused by maintaining those folders. Does take Outlook a bit longer to load cold start getting the profile into mem. Mobile app has been fine. Only problem know seems to be the junkmail filters can't seem to do their job.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-03-13T20:03:43+00:00

    The yearly folders were created in AOL and showed up in outlook. As I said, I never did get the main inbox that low; didn't seem to be a point.

    Outlook 2019 on Win10 seems to have been behaving better and I mostly do my email from there. I had hoped they had fixed it. But after seeing that some were still seeing it cycling, I decided to check, and sure enough, the Outlook 2016 on WIn7 started pretty fast after I started it up. So maybe it needs more current Windows and/or outlook.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-03-13T20:08:01+00:00

    ok thanks; and do you only see this cycling with the export.imap.aol.com endpoint?

    Wouldn't know; had no reason to go back. I'm sure without that "export." it would at best be no worse, but likely it would be worse.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-03-13T20:46:56+00:00

    Thanks. Based on the exploration I did above and my own experience, the non-export endpoints will limit your # of emails to 10,000 per folder. What I'm wondering is, besides this 10k limit, is there some other difference we can discern? If the 'cycling' you describe happens with the non-export endpoints, then there's no advantage at all to using them.

    That said, it does seem based on your description, there is different 'cycling' behavior based on the software versions - which suggests that the cycling might be an Outlook problem vs an AOL or Yahoo problem.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-03-13T21:00:46+00:00

    The cycling occurs with Outlook/AOL export server and Outlook/AOL original imap server and Mailbird/AOL export server and Mailbird/AOL original imap server.

    In all four of these combinations, the behavior of the cycling appears to be identical.

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