Gmail/IMAP doesn't find older messages

Gmail/IMAP doesn't find older messages

[Bob Newell]

Aloha,

This may be a basic question but I've not resolved it with extensive
searching. I'm running Emacs 25.1 and associated Gnus.

I am using gnus to fetch from Gmail via imap. I've got nnir set up. I
search Gmail directly, not through local download and
storage. Everything works fine and has for a while except the following.

I'm noticing when I search the Gmail/All Mail group with G G, older
messages are not found (but I can find them in the Gmail web client).

A clue seems to be this: When I enter the All Mail group, I'm told that
about 9700 messages are available, but actually I've got at least a
hundred thousand dating back for many years.

I don't do anything special (or anything at all) with expiry.

Any hints much appreciated.

Mahalo,

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
* Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux *

Re: Gmail/IMAP doesn't find older messages

[Bob Newell]

Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

> I'm noticing when I search the Gmail/All Mail group with G G, older
> messages are not found (but I can find them in the Gmail web client).
>
> A clue seems to be this: When I enter the All Mail group, I'm told that
> about 9700 messages are available, but actually I've got at least a
> hundred thousand dating back for many years.

I resolved this and the problem was in Gmail itself. In
Settings/Forwarding and POP/IMAP there is an option to limit the number
of messages in an IMAP folder. This had somehow been set to 10,000.

That sounds like a lot but the Gmail/All Mail folder contains literally
everything and 10,000 is less than a year's worth of email for me.

Unfortunately when this is set, search behavior is inconsistent. Gmail
itself will search beyond 10,000 emails and right back to the beginning
of time. But when I search with nnir, the 10,000 limit is enforced and
nnir cannot search beyond that limit because Gmail won't provide info on
the older emails.

So I removed the limit. The cost of this is going to be slower loading
and searching when I'm on weaker internet connections.

While this is not a specific gnus solution, it's something to be aware
of.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
* Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux *