# How to back-up Yahoo mail? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570 "2013-11-10T14:15:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/1 "2013-11-10T14:15:36Z")
For over ten years I’ve had the same yahoo e-mail address. There is a long list of important information, and I’m nervous having no copy of all this on my hard-drive. In Outlook there was this whole process of creating folders on my c: and then I could pull them up again as long as I had a copy of outlook on my computer. But how can I back-up the yahoo files? What if they went belly up, and the “software” was no longer available. How could I retain/access that information? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/2 "2013-11-10T14:29:40Z")
I do not think it should be difficult. Install an email client on your computer and use it to access your online email using either IMAP or POP3 (yahoo might want you to pay for this access). Then just move or copy to the local folders. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/3 "2013-11-10T16:06:15Z")
Aha! the power of searching the right terms, huh? I googled “e-mail client”, found Mozilla Thunderbird, and it led me through the rest in about five minutes. Thanks for the leg up sailor! ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/4 "2013-11-10T16:20:09Z")
Glad it worked. I have always used an email client from the very beginning because I have always had quite a few email addresses and using a client allows using a single program to access all of them. I can’t imagine using web mail one by one. As long as my computer is running the email program is running and checks all accounts every few minutes. That’s how I have done it since the very beginning. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/5 "2013-11-11T02:18:11Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > I do not think it should be difficult. Install an email client on your computer and use it to access your online email using either IMAP or POP3 (yahoo might want you to pay for this access). Then just move or copy to the local folders. Yeah, but Yahoo is special in that they don’t want free users being able to use an external mail client. It’s supposed to be a pay-only feature. I always thought they must be hurting pretty bad for users not to respond to the hack used by Thunderbird. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/6 "2013-11-11T02:49:36Z")
When I tell young people my e-mail address they kinda cock their heads and say “Huh? what’s Yahoo?” I tell them “It’s one step up from AOL.” LOL! So seriously though, are you saying that I just luckily happened upon the only one that would have worked? My account has been variously free and paid over the years, but is currently in “free” mode. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/7 "2013-11-11T04:18:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yeah, but Yahoo is special in that they don’t want free users being able to use an external mail client. It’s supposed to be a pay-only feature. > > I always thought they must be hurting pretty bad for users not to respond to the hack used by Thunderbird. I am interested in this idea (downloading all my e-mails for posterity) for the same reasons as **TruCelt**. I use Firefox on an old version of Linux machine. Can I use Thunderbird as well with Linux to download my e-mails from Yahoo and/or Gmail? A lot of my e-mails (especially outgoing) have file attachments – mostly ZIP files. Do those get included too? What is the Thunderbird hack of which you speak? ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/8 "2013-11-11T07:33:30Z")
I have found that with free Yahoo you can use any client if you use IMAP for receiving email and POP3 for sending. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/9 "2013-11-11T13:11:46Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > I have found that with free Yahoo you can use any client if you use IMAP for receiving email and POP3 for sending. the protocols are SMTP: sending POP3: receiving only, receives only from “INBOX”, but you can tick “do not remove from server” so that you just download a copy IMAP: understands folders, synchronizes them between server and client, ie can allow PUSH back to server ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/10 "2013-11-11T13:15:57Z")
OK, I should have said SMTP. I generally use “POP3” to mean “POP3 & SMTP” as they go together for receiving / sending and then IMAP is a different thing on its own. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-back-up-yahoo-mail/673570/11 "2013-11-12T06:14:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yeah, but Yahoo is special in that they don’t want free users being able to use an external mail client. It’s supposed to be a pay-only feature. > > I always thought they must be hurting pretty bad for users not to respond to the hack used by Thunderbird. I had two Yahoo accounts. Only one of them let me use Tbird. Years ago Yahoo was updating their interface and rolled it out for testing in the UK only, and you could change your location to try it out. I did that and found out I could use POP3 with it. IIRC that was because the UK required all email accounts to be accessible with POP3. Unfortunately, a couple of months ago it refused POP3 access. Ah, well.