How to change amount of emails download in Outlook

Are you missing emails using the Outlook client on Windows 10? No, your emails aren't gone, you just need to adjust the settings, and here's how.

Avatar for Mauro Huculak
@Pureinfotech
Pureinfotech Logo
Outlook download emails settings
Outlook download emails settings

In Outlook, when connecting your different email accounts, the desktop client only downloads and keeps some of your emails on your computer. The app does this based on the size of the hard drive. Usually, if the main drive is larger than 64GB, Outlook will retain a year worth of emails.

However, the rest of your emails are still available on the Exchange server, or on your Outlook.com, Live.com, or Hotmail.com account, they’re just not available through the client.

If you want the client to download all your emails, you can either use the “Click here to view more on Microsoft Exchange” option at the bottom of the Inbox folder, or you can use the settings to specify how many emails you want to see.

In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to adjust the Outlook settings to decide the amount of emails to download and store on your computer running Windows 10.

How to change how many emails to download in Outlook

Use these steps to specify how many emails the Outlook app should download and store on your computer.

Quick note: These instructions apply for Office 365, Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, and older versions. However, in older versions, the amount of emails that you can download may be different.

  1. Open Outlook.

  2. Click on File.

  3. Click the Account Settings button.

  4. Select the Account Settings option.

    Outlook account settings
    Outlook account settings

  5. Click the Email tab.

  6. Select the email account that you want to change.

  7. Click the Change button.

    Outlook change account settings
    Outlook change account settings

  8. Use the slider and specify how much mail you want to Outlook to download and store on your computer. Option include:

    • Three days
    • One week
    • Three weeks
    • One month
    • Three months
    • Six months
    • One year
    • Two years
    • Five years
    • All

    Change download emails amount in Outlook
    Change download emails amount in Outlook

  9. Click the Next button.

  10. Click the Done button.

  11. Click the Close button.

Once you complete the steps, Outlook will download the amount of emails you specified in the settings.

These instructions will work for Exchange servers as well as for Office 365, Outlook.com, Live.com, and Hotmail.com. You may be able to change the download settings for Gmail and other services, but the option won’t work, and the client will download all your emails.

About the author
Avatar for Mauro Huculak

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].