I have some years old Gmail accounts with GBs of messages. When I configure in Kmail, the fetch order is from older to newer, them I have to wait a long time before to get my last messages. I don't tested the behavior with other mail resources, like POP3. Reproducible: Always
Additional information This behavior only happens if inscription (Or subscriptions. My KDE is localized) in the server are enabled.
The IMAP resource has a new maintainer, reassigning to him.
This would require downloading the messages in batches, starting with the highest UID first.
(In reply to Christian Mollekopf from comment #3) > This would require downloading the messages in batches, starting with the > highest UID first. From the IMAP-perspective, only (part of) the headers and MIME structure of the mails need to be fetched first; the MIME payloads can be fetched later, even as-needed (this is how pure IMAP clients such as Trojita do it). For that the akonadi database needs to be able to store such partial fetches.