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
    2022-09-23T22:18:35+00:00

    Just moved 6877 emails (2007-2012) to a new folder. One PC has them all; the other still has the old name (2007-2010 -- I changed the name when I saw the count). The old PC only has some of them so far and the original inbox still has many. It also now has 45,000 and change emails! Bet they don't stay. And it's still cycling, but a while ago it stopped going back down all the way, but it still was dropping them.

    (I found I could check then shift click to select a a range of emails on AOL (web, not using the app). It's a pain, and at some point I'll prob'ly copy (NOT move) the back ones to a PST. Not that I don't trust them, but I DO NOT TRUST THEM.

    With a little under 55K left in the inbox, I'll prob'ly need 5-10 more folders. The good news, as I suspected, as long as they're in the AOL live OST, a search of all folders finds in both the inbox and the date ranged inbox. If I move to a PST I'd have to open and search all PSTs, so I'll keep them on AOL but back them up in PSTs.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T18:38:48+00:00

    Iso13818,

    I appreciate your analysis. export.imap and imap might resolve to the same server, but the function is not identical. The imap server still truncates my inbox and sent items to 10,000 items, while export.imap does allow more, but I have not been able to fully load my inbox due to recycling.

    Your theory does support the fact that the IMAP Subscribed folder function broke in Outlook last Thursday on the export.imap server while it has been broken in the imap server since the original changes were made back in June.

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  3. 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.

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  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.

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  5. 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/

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