Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business
Using classic Outlook for Windows in business environments
Did you try using export.imap.aol.com?
Why is an IMAP Inbox Only Displaying 10,000 Items When There are Many More Emails on the Server?
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Anonymous
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".
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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
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
315 answers
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Anonymous
2024-03-13T14:24:53+00:00 -
Anonymous
2024-02-13T17:36:47+00:00 CHANGE THE INCOMING SERVER SETTING TO
export.imap.aol.com
THIS WORKED FOR ME!
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Anonymous
2023-07-29T15:48:21+00:00 I tired the "export" insertion a few times for imap server ... back in Feb and then again a couple of months ago. Mine would go past 10,000 emails per folder, but then mysteriously go back down to 2,000 per folder right after everything was synced up. Haven't tried it since a couple of months ago.
Also, here is what MS says about that "10,000" ... they claim it's 100,000 emails per folder (not 10,000). I still believe, and always have, that this is an email provider hosting platform parameter, not an Outlook parameter:
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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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Anonymous
2023-02-03T18:18:22+00:00 In my case, it is 1K messages for each folder. I am using Yahoo (now it is owned by turbify).
First, all folders shown up in my outlook, have no way to unsubscribe any of them, now it hits 1K messages.
Whom to blame on? Microsoft outlook or "yahoo mail"?
I used one spare laptop installed thunderbird, seems there is no 1K limits on it.
I switched to Outlook 365 from Thunderbird earlier this week, due to unrelated issues with Thunderbird. I had already hit the AOL 10K limit issue on Thunderbird several months ago, so I knew to use the "export" IMAP address when setting up my AOL account on Outlook.
Initial sync worked fine, pulling down about 26K emails into the local Outlook Inbox folder and about 7K into the local Send folder. The actual numbers matched what mail.aol.com showed.
A day or two later, I noticed that my Inbox only had 1000 (not 10K) emails in it. Sent folder still contained the 7K+ emails. I did a Send/Receive and the Inbox downloaded all of the "missing" emails. This has happened several times over the last few days. It seems to mostly happen when I delete emails in my Inbox (I get a lot of spam). A couple of times it seemed to sync up on its own, but maybe something I did triggered it. Other times, a Send/Receive pulled everything down.
Edit: Looks like I jumped the gun a bit. Just noticed that while I was away, the email count for the Sent folder dropped. Something triggered another Send/Receive because by the time I saw it, the Send folder email count was already back to about 2K, and the process was continuing. Also, Inbox folder is back at 1000, again.