Outlook is the primary emailing interface for Microsoft Exchange Server users. It is synced with the server to fetch and send emails quickly and handily.
It doesn’t matter whether your email client is Outlook.com, Hotmail, or even a third party like Gmail. You can easily set up your account and send all those work emails.
Since they’re your emails, you would want the ability to open them at any time. You can depend on Outlook to display any email you need, no matter how many months have passed since you wrote it. Or can you?
As it turns out, things aren’t that simple. Outlook doesn’t display everything by default: most of your emails remain on Microsoft Exchange Server, while only a portion are available in Outlook.
We’ll show you how to resolve this issue in this guide.
Also Read: How to Add a Gmail Account to Outlook?
Why Does Outlook Have an Email Download Limit?
You might wonder why the situation is this way. When installed on your system, Microsoft Office makes some intelligent settings.
It checks all your hardware and makes the necessary adjustments to optimise the program. Concerning Outlook and enterprise emails, the checks it performs on your hardware are used to set download parameters.
It is trying to help, but the program can become meddlesome. After checking your hard disk to verify how much space is left, it automatically adjusts the time limit determining how many of your emails are retained locally.
The more disk space is available, the more months of emails are downloaded. The calculation is made according to the following formula:
- If free disk space is up to 64 gigabytes, up to 12 months of emails are automatically downloaded to your computer.
- If free disk space lies somewhere between 32 gigabytes and 64 gigabytes (not including either number), three months of emails are automatically downloaded to your computer.
- If the free space on the disk is less than 32 gigabytes, only a month’s worth of emails are retained on your computer’s local storage.
Also Read: Make It Easy: Simple Guide on How to Clear Outlook Cache
Why can’t you download all the emails?
You might wonder what the fuss is about and why the setting couldn’t be set to “download all emails” or something similar.
Contrary to popular belief, emails can take up a lot of storage. Those who lead busy, email-laden lives often find that both sent and received emails have taken up a lot of space.
If you don’t monitor your disk usage, you might wake up to find all your space has been swallowed up by your business correspondence.
Microsoft knows this as well. That is why Office is designed to automatically adjust storage parameters, such as Outlook’s default local email storage limit.
This is usually okay; chances are you don’t have much of a need for emails from years ago.
Moreover, you still get local access to your tasks, calendar appointments, and contacts, irrespective of the setting.
Keep in mind that the efficacy of this setting is dependent on the kind of email client you use. The setting influences how many emails are available locally if you utilize one of Microsoft’s homegrown email service providers, like Hotmail, Outlook, or 365.
The same principle applies to the majority of popular business email services around.
However, if you use a public provider like Gmail, Yandex or Yahoo, you won’t have this worry since the setting won’t have any effect.
All your emails on the Microsoft Exchange Server will have a local copy stored in your computer’s internal storage.
Also Read: How to Fix the “Recipient Address Rejected: Access Denied” Error in Outlook?
How to Make Outlook Download All Emails From the Server
The server here naturally refers to Microsoft Exchange Server. While some businesses purchase a license to host an Exchange Server on the premises, others turn to a third-party Exchange-as-a-Service server provider.
The popularity of Exchange Online, a cloud version of the service hosted by Microsoft itself, is also increasing.
Regardless of the mode of Exchange used, its primary function remains the same: it is a message transfer agent that sends emails between computers.
The messages are read on both ends using an email client, in this case, Outlook.
In essence, by using Exchange, all the emails you’ve ever sent and received are stored on the Exchange Server in perpetuity.
Of course, the eternal retention of your emails is subject to things like cloud storage limits for individual accounts and continuous use of the account.
The point remains that under normal circumstances, you can still see your emails, including the really old ones, even if they aren’t stored on your computer.
So, how can you download all the emails from the server to Outlook? There are two ways to view all your emails in Outlook.
How to Download All Emails from Server in Outlook?
Method 1: Use the “More” link in Outlook
Outlook for Office offers an easy way to extend the number of emails displayed in a folder.
The app will typically display only the most recent emails if you’ve maintained the account for a long time or have a long email history.
But you can force Outlook to download all IMAP emails — or display them, at least.
When you are in a folder such as Inbox or Sent in Outlook and scroll down, you soon reach the end of the displayed emails. Right there, you will see a message informing you that you can click the link to view more messages:
There are more items in this folder on the server
Click Here to view more emails on Microsoft Exchange
Once you click the “Click Here to view more emails on Microsoft Exchange” link, Outlook will download the rest of the emails for that folder to your computer.
This only works if you have an internet connection. Plus, only the emails for a particular folder are downloaded. Thus, if you are in the Sent folder, you get only all the emails you’ve ever sent.
This principle holds if you conduct a mailbox search.
When you type your search query, and results are displayed, if there are plenty of emails matching the search term, you may see the following at the bottom of the results page:
Showing recent results…
More
Clicking the More link downloads the rest of the emails matching your search query.
If you wish to see all your emails in a certain folder at a glance, you can log into your account via the Outlook web app.
That takes you to the Microsoft Exchange Server interface for your account, where you can see everything stored there.
Also Useful: How to Fix “MS Outlook Not Responding” Issue
Method 2: Change the “Mail to Keep Offline” Setting in Outlook
This setting determines how many months’ worth of emails Outlook keeps on your computer.
Remember that this only works when using a Microsoft email client or a recognized business email service provider. You can extend the number of kept emails or reduce it.
You can also tell Outlook to save every one of your emails locally.
According to Microsoft:
Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013 and Outlook for Office 365 provide the options of 1, 3, 6, 12, or 24 months, or All. Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, and Outlook for Office 365 provide the additional options of 3 days, 1 week, and 2 weeks.
Without further ado, here is what you need to do:
- Launch the Outlook application.
- Head to the File tab.
- Select the Account Settings drop-down option.
- When the option is expanded, select Account Settings.
- In the Account Settings window, select the Email tab.
- If you have multiple accounts in Outlook, they will be displayed here. Select the one whose settings you wish to adjust and then click the Change button.
- The Change Account dialog is displayed. Make sure that the Use Cached Exchange Mode checkbox is ticked.
- Move the “Mail to keep offline” slider to the desired number of years, months, days, or weeks. (If the slider is grayed out, your administrator may have blocked you from changing the setting.)
- Click the Next button.
- A pop-up appears asking you to confirm the configuration change. Click OK.
- Click Finish and restart Outlook.
You should soon see a message informing you that “Your folders are up to date” at the bottom of Outlook. This only appears after Outlook downloads all your messages from Microsoft Exchange Server.
Only choose the All option if there is enough storage. Your settings should match the amount of space on your disk.
If you download all emails to a disk with limited space, problems are inevitable. We recommend you delete all unwanted items from your storage first to free up more space.
Naturally, you may have difficulty deciding what to remove from your storage, so we are here to help you.
Did you know that apart from the obvious files on your system, there are also junk files that serve no purpose apart from inflating your storage use?
Of course, you’d want to eliminate them, but finding where they are might be an issue.
Also Read: BCC Explained: How to Add a Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) in Outlook
This software is designed to sweep out all types of PC junk, such as unneeded system and user temporary files, web browser cache, unused error logs, leftover Windows Update files, unneeded Microsoft Office cache, and more.
After a scan, you will notice the extra gigabytes of disk space reclaimed. As a bonus, BoostSpeed finds and removes all causes of system slowdowns, ensuring your PC performs better and is more stable than before.
Conclusion
If you want to learn how to download all emails from the server in Outlook, check out this guide. We’ve gone through the various steps to resolve the problem.
If you’ve found this article helpful, share it with your friends who might find it helpful and share your thoughts in the comments below!
FAQ
Go to the “File” tab in Outlook, click “Account Settings,” and then choose “Account Settings” once more from the drop-down menu. Choose your email account from the list in the Account Settings window, then click “Change.” Next, select the “Advanced” option by clicking “More Settings”. Check the “Leave a copy of messages on the server” box under the Delivery section. This will ensure that your emails are not erased from the server when they are downloaded to Outlook. After selecting “Next” and “Finish” to dismiss the Account Settings box, click “OK” to save your changes. After opening Outlook, go to the “File” tab, then click “Account Settings” and choose “Account Settings” once more from the drop-down menu. Choose your email account from the list in the Account Settings window, then click “Change.” Next, select the “Advanced” option by clicking “More Settings”. Check the “Leave a copy of messages on the server” box under the Delivery section. This guarantees that all your emails can be downloaded to Outlook and stay on the server. After selecting “Next” and “Finish” to dismiss the Account Settings box, click “OK” to save your changes. Go to the “File” tab in Outlook, click “Account Settings,” and then choose “Account Settings” once more from the drop-down menu. Choose your email account from the list in the Account Settings window, then click “Change.” Next, select the “Advanced” option by clicking “More Settings”. Check the “Leave a copy of messages on the server” box under the Delivery section. You may also decide whether to delete messages from your Deleted Items folder or the server after a predetermined number of days. After selecting “Next” and “Finish” to dismiss the Account Settings box, click “OK” to save your changes.
