A long time ago, I got a Yahoo! mail account long before the wonderful Gmail was available. All my friends had Yahoo accounts and we all slowly migrated to using Gmail or other services. I kept the account active to use for Yahoo services, but recently it was hacked since I used a fairly basic password setup a long time ago. Due to this, I have decided to close the account, but before I do, I want to keep all my email and contacts from so long ago.
After doing some research, I have found the following ways to save email. All of these involves setting up an email program on a computer that can read “POP” email. This older method of email reading is not used as much as the more commonly know standard of “IMAP”, but many, if not all, popular email applications can still read email this way. Please note that when you use any of these methods, you must move all your email out of any custom folders you have setup and in your “inbox”. Choose one of these methods and then move to the next step.
1. Use Gmail’s Import Feature (easiest if you are moving to Gmail anyway)
Google recently implemented a feature that allows you to import all your mail and contacts into Gmail just by providing your username and password. From there, you can use a free feature in Gmail to save all email to a local computer (see instructions below).
2. Puchase a 1-year Yahoo! mail plus subscription (costs money, but doesn’t require workaround)
In order to gain POP access using Yahoo! mail, you must(ish) purchase a $19.95/year subscription called Yahoo! Mail Plus. Once you’ve done this, proceed to the last section to save all email in the inbox to a local computer.
3. Enable POP access for your Yahoo! mail (Using a wordaround)
For some strange reason, if you change the regional language settings to “asia”, you can then follow a link to enable POP access. To enable this setting, login to your Yahoo! Mail and click on your username at the top right (to bring up your account settings). There are other ways of bringing up your account settings, but I find this to be the easiest.
Under the “Account Settings” section, select “Set language, site, and time zone”.
In this section, select “Asia” as your “Regional Site and Language” and then select “Save”.
Go ahead and logout, then log right back in and click on this link. It will direct you to the preferences page to enable POP access for your yahoo account.
Select “Web & POP Access” and choose the option to receive all messages (you can filter them out later). Then click on save and proceed to the next section.
Saving email to a local computer via POP access.
There are many different email programs you can use to save email to a local computer. My personal favorites are Apple Mail or Thunderbird. You could also use MS Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail as well. Since there are so many programs that could be used, I’ll include links on how to setup each program for POP email access and what the Yahoo! Mail settings are.
Incoming Mail server: plus.pop.mail.yahoo.com
Outgoing Mail server: plus.smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Username: Your Yahoo username (without the @yahoo.com at the end)
Password: Your Yahoo password