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
    2022-06-20T12:45:35+00:00

    Same absurd problem with 10K limit.

    Please add my name. Thanks for all the effort.

    Steven Ger

    Garland, TX

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-20T06:07:03+00:00

    I not only have the 10,000 limit problem, but when I check webmail and ask to sort "oldest first", it is not showing me anything before 2011. I for sure had messages going back to 2001 and I have seen them in the last year or so. UPDATE: I can see everything in webmail. I was looking in the wrong mailbox. All my old messages are there, intact. But the 10,000 message limit still exists when accessing email hosted on Yahoo via IMAP with Outlook 365 on Mac.

    Has anyone else noticed something similar? It is dreadful that we are paying for email service but somehow messages are inaccessible or missing.

    I may have what is missing in a backup. I need to check. UPDATE: My backups are good and as I updated above, webmail confirms that the messages are still on the server in any case. Whew.

    Mark Cousins

    *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-20T02:11:22+00:00

    I H Binash, Yahoo mail from AT&T , Outlook 2013, USA

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T05:16:54+00:00

    Please add to my name as follows:

    Michael Walker, AOL Mail, Outlook, Canada

    You can also add:

    Eva Walker, Yahoo Rogers, Outlook, Canada

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-18T04:56:31+00:00

    Hello, Yan. Yep, same problem. My Yahoo mail shows 26,000 messages in inbox, but only 10,000 appear in Outlook 365. I am using Windows 10 on a Lenovo T490s. The problem started a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like your complaint is the most likely to yield fruit, so please keep us posted.

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