Does macOS Monterey limit the number of messages available in Mail?

Delete the email account from mail.

Login to AOL on the web and go to account settings then to account security.

Make sure you have 2-step verification enabled.

In AOL account security choose 'generate and manage app passwords'. Enter the name of the app as 'Apple Mail' and generate a one time password (I could only get this to work on Chrome so it might depend on browser settings). Copy this one time password.

Re-add the email account in mail but DO NOT select AOL account. Choose 'Other mail account'.

Use the one time password instead of your normal AOL password to login.

All your emails should now show in mail.

dick134 wrote:

Does macOS Monterey limit the number of messages available in Mail?

Do you say who provides your email...(?)

The mail client does not limit the data base—

To see if there are server limits Control click on a mailbox for your account in question>Get Account info

I'm not sure what "available in Mail" means. Are you asking if you can limit what is downloaded? That is no.

iCloud limits the number of messages you can send and number of recipients: Mailbox size and message sending limits in iCloud - Apple Support

Good luck in your follow-up! They will probably try to blame it on AOL, so you may have to talk them out of that. As support that it's not AOL:

• The same problem doesn't occur if you load that same account into Spark, Outlook, or another mail client.
• The same problem does occur in Yahoo for some so it's not just AOL.
• The problem does not seem to occur in older Apple OS builds, like High Sierra and Catalina.
• The problem briefly resolved for both Yahoo and AOL users between 2/10 and 2/28, so it's almost beyond odds that both companies would have found a fix on the same day and then had it broken again at the same time. Must have been Apple changes that fixed it, and therefore can fix it again.

The problem that most of us are describing is not solved or addressed by this. Neither the mail provider nor the app indicate any limits on the accounts in question. Yet the Apple Mail apps won't load more than 10,000 emails in the inbox. This behavior started around the new year. It doesn't apply to Google accounts. It seems to affect both Yahoo and AOL email addresses. But no one will take ownership of the problem, each blaming it on the others.

dick134 wrote:

re: LPShanet wrote:

The problem that most of us are describing is not solved or addressed by this. Neither the mail provider nor the app indicate any limits on the accounts in question. Yet the Apple Mail apps won't load more than 10,000 emails in the inbox. This behavior started around the new year. It doesn't apply to Google accounts. It seems to affect both Yahoo and AOL email addresses. But no one will take ownership of the problem, each blaming it on the others.

So move half the 10,000 to a mailbox you create in "On My Mac" call it 'old-inbox' or some such if it is a problem. The Mail search function searches the entire database not just what is on the IMAP server sync to your Inbox.

You can tell the product team directly if you want to see something different:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

That doesn't address it. Many of us have around 100,000 emails in those boxes, and it removes some of the features. This is a bug not a limit.

The Apple product team is aware of this problem, but is not pursuing it. They have decided it's an email company problem, not theirs, even though it happens with both AOL and Yahoo.

I am having the same problem, I am seeing mail folders limited to 10,000 on my yahoo imap account and it is across all devices regardless of version of iOS or macOS. I confirmed mail is in yahoo web interface and also setup outlook to see if imap is just apple mail. Outlook on same Mac downloaded all imap mail. I also tried old 2012 Mac and when I started mail all was there and within a few min it purged older messages leaving 10,000 most recent. I’m also asking yahoo same questions.

I hope you'll share what happens with this thread either way, so we know where Apple stands on this. If it helps for your call, here are my observations about the issue, as I have experienced it.

• It seems to happen for some accounts with large email counts, but not all. I have a Gmail account with MANY emails in it, and they all are present (as far as I know), or at least not limited to 9.999. It has only happened on a large AOL account that I have. Though others have mentioned seeing it on Yahoo accounts as well. I don't know which services it affects, but that may be notable.
• When I attach the account to other Mail clients like Spark or Outlook, they handle all the emails normally, and they appear, so it does seem to be a Mac Mail problem.
• The problem didn't at first appear on my old machine, which had a much earlier OS on it. I think it was Catalina. However, when I updated the OS on that machine to Big Sur, the problem appeared suddenly on that machine, too. So it seems to be affecting Big Sur as well as Monterey.

Good luck!

Spark for me cures the problem. But I’m using a Yahoo account and I’m on Catalina, and Mail app still limits to 10,000 emails in the main Inbox.

As Apple support don’t seem to be bothered about this, even though numerous users have raised the issue, I’ve stopped using Mail on my MacBook Pro and have switched to Spark.

There is clearly an issue, and it’s not Yahoo or AOL, nor is it a specific OS problem as my Mac came with Catalina, I haven’t updated the OS yet (music user) and everything was working fine until around mid January (over a year since I got the Mac).

I'd be very surprised if it resolved itself. It hasn't for any of those on this thread, apart from the brief period where it suddenly seemed to get fixed for everyone.

Interesting that your cap seems to be 20,000 while most of us have had it capped at 10,000.

While the problem has appeared in multiple OS versions, I did recently find that it wasn't present in High Sierra when I loaded the problem account on another machine that still had it. So it must in some way relate to either the OS or the age of the machine. It appears to start at some point in the Catalina progression for most.

Well for me Spark shows an inbox count of 999+ (if you enable it over just showing unread count). But the main point for me wasn't the email count, but the fact in Mail I couldn't scroll down past the 10,000th email in my Yahoo account, even though they are stored on my Mac. But with Spark I can scroll down through the 10,000th email in the inbox and right through my entire Yahoo inbox if needed.

That's what bothered me most rather than the actual count on display.

So, yes Spark is still working well for me.

Having the same issue after upgrading to Monterey...I needed to reference an email from 2014 which I searched the title for with no result, and scrolled all the way to the bottom and noticed the oldest email was from 2020! Then noticed 10,000 emails in view. Fluctuates back to 9,999 occasionally. I also tried rebuilding that account (Yahoo) to no avail. I also tried deleting that account from Mail and then adding it again. During the downloading it said it was downloading 24k+ emails and I left it overnight. After it finished still only 10,000 in view. Back to square one...

I had the same problem and found the solution yesterday in this thread and it worked for me.

Mail won't retrieve more than 10,000 emai… - Apple Community