combine Yahoo! id's

April 16, 2008 9:44 AM

How can I combine two email identities in Yahoo without losing anything?

I have 2 different yahoo! email addresses. I would like to only use one from now on, but of course, have subscriptions and accounts through one and not the other. Is there a way to combine my id's and not lose these things? I would like to choose, say, staying on one mailing list and not another, though.

I'm worried that I will switch to one, but forget that it is the email address for an important account and not be able to access that account because I no longer have access to the email account I close.

posted by Rae Datter to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I wanted to do this last year and never did figure out a way. I finally just changed my email addresses as needed to the keeper account.

Can you pop mail one Yahoo account from another? I know you can not forward with a free Yahoo account, but you may able to check one account from another. If not, you could set up a Gmail account to pull the Yahoo mail from the unwanted account into Gmail, and them forward it to your good Yahoo mail account. It's kind of messy, but I think it should work.
posted by COD at 9:55 AM on April 16

I am not sure it's possible to combine the two in the way that you mean but if you consolidate the accounts onto the "primary," there's no reason to fully close the second as long as you don't ignore it completely.

There are a couple of options, one of which is to bite the bullet and pay $20/year to upgrade to Yahoo Plus, which would allow you to forward the messages from the secondary account to the primary. Unfortunately, this would mean upgrading the account that you only occasionally needed.

Another option is just to rely on a third-party service for checking mail. I have a Yahoo account that I never use for e-mail but I'm still able to see when I occasionally get a message there because I use Pidgin for IM. I just put in my Yahoo ID and I get a message in Pidgin when I get new mail once every few months. There are other cross-platform IM clients that will do the same.

Something like Digsby is another option -- you can enter multiple account credentials for Yahoo, so you could have the secondary account and continue to monitor it without having to check the Yahoo site itself.
posted by camcgee at 10:22 AM on April 16

I too tried for a long time to figure this out. Finally I consolidated a of yahoo address by hand, it wasn't easy and it wasn't exactly what you need but it may offer you ideas.

First I stopped using one account entirely, I made sure to update a few web accounts with my new address and I had to make new accounts with a few that wouldn't let me edit my address. Then I just logged in occasionally to check the account, at first weekly for emails from old friends etc. then monthly until I was sure that I really really didn't need it anymore.

I ended up keeping it open for a good two years without ever actually sending an email from it, and to be honest I never received an important email that would have been lost had I closed it sooner. Finally I downloaded all the old Yahoo messages into Thunderbird with YPOPS and closed the account. Now I've got the emails sitting on my computer, should I ever desire to read them, or send them somewhere using another non-yahoo account.

You could break down and buy premium service from yahoo mail, I just didn't want to do that.
posted by Science! at 10:24 AM on April 16