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
    2022-10-08T01:20:02+00:00

    I don't have the time or inclination to participate in a class action, and I certainly don't want to start dropping 1000s paying attorney's fees. Instead, I'm going to vote with my feet: I am currently a paid subscriber to Yahoo! Business email and I plan to switch to another provider, possibly paid Gmail as their IMAP support seems very good. I know Yahoo! isn't going to care about the loss of one subscriber such as myself but this battle has gone on too long with no end in sight. I have a strong technical background and can assert confidently that this isn't an Outlook problem per se ... I ran a test using Mac Mail and got the same result (spontaneous and repeated resyncing). I have also inspected the Yahoo! server's IMAP responses using openssl and don't see anything obviously wrong (UIDs are stable, etc) so I have no idea why this is happening.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-07T14:24:49+00:00

    I didn't get any recent windows updates, and am using "export.imap.aol.com"

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T23:48:32+00:00

    It just happened again. I noticed my Win10 Office 2019 outlook was sticking in send/receive (which is a bug that has happened from time to time over the years); restarted it, then noticed that my main inbox (around 40K) was a few thousand. It's up to 7K and climbing. Let's see how high it goes.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T14:38:15+00:00

    Does anyone have suggestions for moving emails on Yahoo to folders more quickly? It is so tedious and time consuming

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T22:22:13+00:00

    [Sorry for the long post. If you want to skip my comments/info, please go to the bottom and see recommendation in red for someone posting our complaints directly on AOL site, and letting us know the link so we all can jump in and echo the problems]

    Perfect timing Alan. I was just getting ready to post below information, and saw your suggestions. I assume class action is possible because many/most users are paying for "Premium" service (??).

    And I personally would be interested in retaining expert and/or at least holding Zoom, etc., and would chip in as well.

    I'm concerned that we're not "united" enough to have any impact on the higher ups, and despite having 26 pages of Replies, and 4,821 Views as of today, we're on an Outlook forum and may not even be on Yahoo/AOL's radar.

    Also, we haven't attempted any "organized" communications/protests since some of us signed on to a letter sent to the CEO's a while back, and I don't know that it ever was received, because the last post I can find from the author, YanTeper, was Aug. 12th, saying:

    To my great embarrassment the letter to Yahoo Corporate office returned again. Does anyone know if they moved the HQ from Sunnyvale (I have sent it to 701 First Ave) or maybe they have agreement with USPS not to deliver customer mail :-( Does anyone have a reliable address for Yahoo Inc HQ?

    Anyway, below is my original post (prior to seeing suggestions about class action, etc.) :

    ======================================================

    Since we're all in agreement that this isn't an Outlook "problem", I thought it might be helpful to see if people were posting on Yahoo/AOL forums and give our input there as well.

    Came across: https://aol.uservoice.com/ (I presume Yahoo has similar), and the email forum is https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886

    Very annoying that the directory of Postings doesn't show dates (without opening the individual posting).

    Also, in most cases, there are only 1 or 2 Comments because the status tends to be "Comments are closed".

    But there are a ton of rantings about excess Spam, 3rd party app password problems, and as far as the IMAP/limit problem, I specifically found a Post from a couple of weeks ago : https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886-aol-mail/suggestions/45718630-imap-folder-limit-100k-emails-a-bad-idea

    I've pasted it below, and unfortunately, it's ranked 16th in priority, with the only comments being from the original poster. This was after a response from "AdminProduct Support (Product Support, AOL). (They probably closed Comments right afterwards).

    Amazingly, these Support people said they're aware of the problem and working on it. Meanwhile, they said to use webmail or AOL app, or limit folders to less than 10K. (The Poster wasn't happy, because his original concern was 100K, and he pointed out that 10K is ridiculous, because you can only move 1 or 2,000 emails at a time).

    16th ranked

    imap folder limit 100k emails a bad idea

    Currently export.imap.mail.aol is limited to 100k. this is new. this is a huge problem for MANY of us PAID users that have way more than that 100k per folder. used to be 1M limit. that is ok. PLEASE change it back because many of us have many folders that exceed the limit and need to be able to offload our emails to our own local servers, and third party programs.

    i also tried to create new folders to get each folder under 100k BUT the copy function limits you to moving 1000 emails at a time (that is anotehr suggestion). avalonavshared this idea  ·  Sep 20, 2022  ·Responded  ·  AdminProduct Support (Product Support, AOL) responded  ·  Sep 20, 2022 Hi there. Our team is aware of this issue and is working to have it resolved. Try using our AOL app and webmail to access your account or redistribute your emails to less than 10K per folder.

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    avalonavcommented  ·  September 20, 2022 2:48 PM  · 

    EMAIL IS CRITICAL TO DOWNLOAD VIA IMAP!!

    WE CANNOT REDISTRIBUTE EMAILS IN BULK BECAUSE THE COPY FUNCTION LIMIT IS ABOUT 2000 EMAILS. So there is no reasonable time efficient was to redistribute large numbers of emails!!

    =============================

    My suggestion is that somebody from our group go to https://aol.uservoice.com/forums/912886 and post about the problems with IMAP, Export, password, Bulk, etc.

    Since the problem is across Apple and multiple 3rd party email apps, I assume we'd all agree to omit the fact that we're using Outlook.

    Then immediately post the Link from your AOL posting on this forum so the rest of us can quickly go and add additional Comments, or at least click "Critical"... and there's also a "VOTE" button so we can get it ranked high.

    Thanks, Norman

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