Download Yahoo mail without Yahoo Plus!
For a while now I have been searching for a way to download and archive mail from my free Yahoo mail account without needing to pay the $20/year that Yahoo Plus costs.
I have found a solution using Zimbra Desktop.
Zimbra Desktop is able to connect to any Yahoo mail account and cache messages for use offline. It also offers a handy import/export tool. Using this you are able to archive off your Yahoo mail without needing to pay for the ability.
The basic process is:
- Install Zimbra and link it with your Yahoo account.
- Once all the message have been downloaded, click preferences, and import/export.
- Export all messages.
- This will create a .tar.gz file with all of your messages/contacts/calendar data.
This file can be extracted and contains all of your messages in .eml format. These can be used natively with Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook Express. If you wish to import these to Outlook 2003/2007 (like I did) you will need to load them all into Outlook Express and then export them from there into the full Outlook client.
Hope this helps.