Can only access 500 latest PMs in my Inbox

Bug Reports Roblox Application and Website Bugs
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#1

Sometime in the last few days, the Roblox website only shows the 500 latest private messages you have received in your inbox. I confirmed with multiple people who have over 500 PMs and they all could only access the last 500 messages they’ve received.

In the inbox UI, only 25 pages are visible (20 items per page, 500 total):
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The unread messages indicator is also capped at 500:
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Just to confirm this isn’t just a visual glitch, I checked the web API - it also caps at 500 (see totalCollectionSize)
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Unread count via the API:
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The only indication that older messages are just inaccessible and haven’t been outright deleted (which is what I thought at first) is that if you archive some of your messages to remove them from the inbox, you can then go back to the last page and see more older messages appear there. Other than through this workaround, older messages might as well have been deleted.

I have thousands of messages dating back years in my inbox and now I can’t access them at all. This is really frustrating.

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#2

It seems more like a limitation on roblox side and not an bug

#3

that makes literally no difference. The site randomly started capping the limit of messages you can see in your inbox, and that’s a problem. This is the report for that problem

#4

Hey everyone, thank you for reporting this issue!
This has been brought to our team’s attention and we’re working on a fix. Rest assured these messages haven’t been removed from our system, but a bug has made them temporarily inaccessible. Will post back in this thread with any updates!

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#5

Hi again!
We’ve rolled out a patch and users should now be able to view up to 10000 messages in their inbox. This should cover every message for nearly all of our users, and we’re currently exploring long-term strategies for the handful of users that exceed this limit. For these users, we may reach out individually in the coming days to discuss.

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#6

awesome, great to see progress on this! I can now see 500 pages in the Messages bar as opposed to 25, but actually seeing the messages doesn’t seem to be working properly. On the newer messages (pages 1-200) it seems to be working fine, but I sometimes get code-500 InternalServerErrors when trying to load later pages like 200-300, and it errors more frequently as the pages go on, to the point where I can’t load pages 400-500 at all because it returns an error every time.

I also have more messages than 10k, i’m pretty sure like 16k? (I can’t see how many anymore, lol)

for these reasons, this fix doesn’t fully solve the issue for me, so I’d definitely like to see progress on this. Are you able to share any insight into why the limit exists in the first place? I’m sure there are valid reasons, but from my perspective I just randomly started encountering a limit to accessing my own messages, so it’s definitely frustrating. Thank you for providing updates on this issue!

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#7

Hi jmk, appreciate you following up!
For transparency, we recently changed the way we store/retrieve private messages internally. One of the tradeoffs of these changes is that message retrieval / counting operations are more difficult for users with an especially high volume of messages. We realize that what’s currently implemented is a short-term solution, and are currently working towards something long-term so you and other high-traffic users are able to view all of your messages reliably. Again, thank you for your patience as we work towards a fix!

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#8

Was this change only applied to the inbox tab? I’m still unable to view more than 500 messages (25 pages) in my sent/archive tabs.

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#9

A few solutions I can think of that would cut down on messages and increase the messaging systems cleanliness and purpose would be adding message support for priority, deleting, and threading.

Message priority:
When going through messages, it’s impossible to know which ones are higher priority than others.

This is a huge problem that makes the messaging system obsolete when you’re a creator that gets flooded with every type of message you can think of.

Instead of having all incoming messages being treated as the same, there should be some system of priority for what is checked first. Things that are of higher priority could be messages from verified users, replies to messages you’ve sent out, messages from friends, and then messages from followers. This idea should come with settings for users to choose what’s most important.

Deleting messages:
The archive system works well until you’re spammed and have hundreds of archived messages and the important ones that are archived are hidden behind and inside that mess.

The purpose of the archive should be to keep important messages. The idea of deleting messages would give the messaging system the organization that it needs while also presumably cutting down on data costs.

When a creator wants to keep relevant feedback on their creations in a contained space, they have no option other than the inbox. Spam and scam messages are usually always archived as a means to get rid of them which makes storing important things in the archive, which is its main purpose, is utterly useless because of how many unwanted messages I’d have to filter through to get to what I want.

Message threading:
Every time you reply to a message, it gets sent as a new message with the previous messages copied below.

This plays a role in flooded inboxes and presumably higher data costs.

Instead of sending a new copy of the message when you reply, it could instead shoot the message back to the top of the inbox with the reply inserted at the top. This way when two people send five messages back and forth, they don’t have to archive all ten that are now in their inbox.

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