How can I download Yahoo emails to my PC and keep them separate from my work email on MS Outlook?

November 10, 2008 6:40 AM

How can I download or archive the email from my Yahoo email account to a PC without it interfering with my work email running on Outlook on that same PC?

Once downloaded, the yahoo email has to be searchable, filter-able, etc, so a flat text or zip file won't work. Can I install something like Thunderbird and use it to connect to my yahoo account without it conflicting with my Outlook email? In addition, I don't want the email to disappear from Yahoo - the emails on yahoo should be unchanged. If possible, the download solution should preserve my Yahoo mail folder structure.

This is strictly for forensic or archival purposes. I don't need to send yahoo email through this solution, only download and organize them. Given this, is Thunderbird even the best solution?

posted by Pastabagel to computers & internet (7 comments total)

You can download Zimbra to download mails.
posted by labnol at 7:18 AM on November 10, 2008

I believe you'll need the upgraded $20 per year account for pop access to your Yahoo mail. Once you have that, any mail client will work. Yahoo owns Zimbra, so it's possible the fee is waived for Zimbra users. It's worth looking into.
posted by COD at 7:21 AM on November 10, 2008

If yahoo doesn't allow popping, Thunderbird + Freepops may help you get around that.
posted by chrisamiller at 7:25 AM on November 10, 2008

I did exactly this with YPOPS and set up a bogus account in Thunderbird (fake server names in case I accidentally sent a message).
posted by Science! at 7:34 AM on November 10, 2008

Seconding Science, YPOPs! is the way to go...
posted by masher at 9:17 AM on November 10, 2008

Thanks, everyone. I hadn't even realized Yahoo disabled POP3 access. Looks like YPOPS is the way to go, but I'm going to try freepops as well, as that may help strip mine my other accounts.
posted by Pastabagel at 11:21 AM on November 10, 2008

I'm going to try freepops as well, as that may help strip mine my other accounts.

If any of those accounts are with hotmail, it might be useful to know that hotmail changed their interface the other day, which briefly broke freepops. As usual, a developer had a patched version of the hotmail interface up within a day or so, and you can find it here.

Just replace the old one in the folder with all your other .lua files, restart freepops, and you're back up and running.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:04 PM on November 10, 2008