Can you copy pop email and leave it online?

[yoda313]

I have a yahoo email address that I've had for at least 10 years and I have tons of emails saved in it.

I've never used a home version of outlook or any other email program. I've saved my emails online so I can access them should the computer they were saved on ever have a problem - even though I do semi-regular backups.

If I were to finally use a home version of outlook or whatever can you download the emails and keep them on the web mail account?

What I would want is to have a copy of them but always keep them on yahoos server for future retrieval on any system that can access email.

I've never really read up on pop email too closely. Is this possible to leave the original email on the server but download a copy to a local computer? Or is it gone from the server once you access?

I guess I should be more literate about this aspect of email but I've never wanted to attempt it before for fear of losing the emails.

Also can you "reuppload" the email should it somehow come off the server?

Thanks.

[aedipuss]

most email clients have a setting to leave messages on the server. this is thunderbirds.



re-uploading is not an option i've ever seen.

[NoBuddy]

You can download all pop3 mails to your mail client. Only activate the "leave a copy of message on the server".

Reupload: maybe send a copy from every incoming mail to another mail account (maybe Gmail)

Edit: aedipuss was faster

[yoda313]

most email clients have a setting to leave messages on the server. this is thunderbirds.

Great thanks. I'll check out a few email programs sometime and toy around with them.

re-uploading is not an option i've ever seen.

Ok that is not really needed if I can leave them on the server in the first place.

Thanks for replying also nobuddy

[aedipuss]

with thunderbird you'd want to be OFFLINE until you change that setting as the default is to not leave them.

[yoda313]

with thunderbird you'd want to be OFFLINE until you change that setting as the default is to not leave them.

Does it have an offline mode like the webrowsers or do you mean physically unconnect your interent connection?

[johns0]

with thunderbird you'd want to be OFFLINE until you change that setting as the default is to not leave them.

Does it have an offline mode like the webrowsers or do you mean physically unconnect your interent connection?

With Thunderbird choose file/offline/work offline.

[aedipuss]

personally i'd download thunderbird, go offline, install, make the change, and then let it go online. but i'm not a very trusting person...

[hello_hello]

Some email providers might ignore the email program and do their own thing according to how you set up your account on their server. I've never used Yahoo, but Gmail has options to delete or archive mail etc after you've downloaded it. It's been a long time since I set up my Gmail account and I'm not sure I ever tested it, but I'd assume if you have your Gmail account sent to achieve mail after it's been downloaded it'd ignore any instructions from an email program to delete it. Just a thought....

[yoda313]

Thanks everyone.

I'll check em out sometime this weekend I think.

I'm mainly interested in burning a backup of my yahoo emails and still leaving them on the server. I'd have to go into the email settings through yahoo to get the pop info. Also I don't know if yahoo has any "leave on server" master settings as Hello_hello is suggesting.

I'll let you know if I have any more questions.

[jagabo]

I'm mainly interested in burning a backup of my yahoo emails and still leaving them on the server.

Thunderbird will be good for that. Of course, Thunderbird itself can search and browse the emails. But it can save all the emails (or portions) in a single file that can be opened with any text editor or text file search utility. The file can be easily zipped, archived, etc. 20 years from now if you need to access the emails you can use any text editor. You won't have to dig up some old email client that works with Linux 2030.

[yoda313]

I'm mainly interested in burning a backup of my yahoo emails and still leaving them on the server.

Thunderbird will be good for that. Of course, Thunderbird itself can search and browse the emails. But it can save all the emails (or portions) in a single file that can be opened with any text editor or text file search utility. The file can be easily zipped, archived, etc. 20 years from now if you need to access the emails you can use any text editor. You won't have to dig up some old email client that works with Linux 2030.

Great. Sounds like exactly what I need.

I'm doing other file backups and what not this evening but I'll definitely be getting on to this soon.

Thanks again.

Edit - ok I'm one step closer - I finally went to cnet and I am downloading thunderbird now.

[aedipuss]

for firefox/thunderbird why would you download them anywhere but mozilla.org? third parties often bundle crapware into the installers.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

[jagabo]

for firefox/thunderbird why would you download them anywhere but mozilla.org? third parties often bundle crapware into the installers.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

I agree.

[yoda313]

Thanks everyone. I am now downloading over 4300 emails I'll archive them to disk and to my amazon cloud account that I have for family photos. Can't be too careful

As for downloading from cnet - old habits die hard I guess. Thats my first go to place for downloads. Also I never check the extra stuff they throw at you.

Now after my downloads are done I'll go check out the archiving options.