Migrating away from Yahoo mail

[AlanHK]

I've had a Yahoo email address for over 10 years now.

I wanted to use my own POP mail client, so I've been paying for the "premium" service.

However, it's not very special and I'm getting more and more pissed off with Yahoo. For one thing it's absolutely impossible to contact any human staff member if you have a problem. Any email you send to any address just gets ignored or sometimes you get an automatically generated message that doesn't answer the question.

So does anyone know what happens if I let my paid account expire (it's up this month)? Will it just revert to a free web email account? I'd hope so, but can't confirm that (as above, they never answer any questions). A lot of people have my Yahoo address so I can't just abandon it.

I plan to go to GMail, as I understand that has free POP mail.

[deadmeow]

I do not know if you will lose your email address if you stop payment for the premium email. However, I can tell you what Yahoo did with my Yahoo/Geocities website in the past.

I upgraded my website from a free website to one of the premium pay websites (to drop adds, more options etc..), and when I decided to stop paying for it, so my website would just "go back" to the free version, they deleted the website, and I could not use the previously free website address that I had used through free and premium times. The site has tons of pages, but I did have it saved, so of course, and re-upload everything again, and edit the links pointing to the new address on a "new" Yahoo/Geocities website.

Later on Yahoo/Geocities shutdown all their free websites (but giving you the option to pay to keep it up) some time after that, I had to move it again. The strange thing is though, they had all of my "old copies" of the site removed from the Wayback Machine historic website search engine, when some old versions had previously been stored there. I am assuming they had legal control over it, since they hosted it for free or something. That is all just too sneaky for me.

If I were you, make sure you backup all your contacts, and be prepared if they junk your email address, or keep simply paying for it, until you can migrate all of you contacts to your new email address.

[Poppa_Meth]

Little known fact is that you can use Yahoo's IMAP server for free if you just figure out how to set it up. No premium account needed. Thunderbird can use it once you get the settings correct. It's been a while since I did it but I'll have to check the one I set up at work.

[budz]

IMHO you would be better off with a Gmail acct......a bit off topic but I had a problem with downloading a Android application for my smartphone....Google was able to assist me with it via my Gmail acct.....can't better customer service than that.....Just my 2 cents!

[TreeTops]

Yes, Yahoo new email has some serious problems. For instance, they took away my right mouse capabilities. I always us the right mouse on mail to open in another tab. That way it is very easy to get back to the mail to open another. That is gone now.

[Ai Haibara]

If you've got a mouse with a middle button (or a scroll wheel, which often doubles as the middle button), you can try clicking on the links with that button to open the links in a new tab. (Of course, if you're using Firefox, there are a handful of ways to prevent Javascript from disabling your right-click context menu. I don't know about the other browsers, though. I think I've seen a bookmarklet in the past that would re-enable RC for other browsers... I'd have to find it again, though.)

I can't say I've tried the new Yahoo mail interfaces, yet... should I just go ahead and stick with the Classic view, as long as they keep it?

[TreeTops]

Thanks for telling me about the middle wheel thing. I did try it and got a pop up that says 'click to open in a new tab' but nothing happened.

[byteguy]

Alan: Yes, it reverts to the free version. You'll get adverts, tag-line added to outgoing emails, and run up against the space limit (no clue what happens if you go over). Also, if you don't log in every so often they turn off the account and delete everything.

Tree: Are you using the new Mail interface or "Classic"? New Mail is all java and has tabs built in so you can open as many emails as you want and still go back to the "Inbox" (or whatever) tab that you want. It's much friendlier.

[TreeTops]

Thanks Byteguy. I am using the new mail. Yes, you are correct. I just figured it out. I did the open mail and it did open in a tab within the yahoo mail program. Sorry for my stupidness. I was looking for a new Firefox tab.

[budwzr]

Yeah, I agree that Yahoo sucks. The CEO is an imbecile.