Summary: To save mail from a webmail service you need to download it to your machine. Not all webmail services make saving email easy, so we improvise.
At my Yahoo email account box i have more than 3000 messages already read. I would like to keep some of them "forever". How could I transfer them to a safer place, like a pendrive? I know that some email accounts (Yahoo, gmail...) say they will keep them, but...things change, we all know that.
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It's not just that things change, things break. Passwords get forgotten. Email accounts get lost.
Depending on exactly what you want to do I can think of two general approaches to save email for posterity. One, at least, will work with any email service. The other will depend on exactly what features the service provides.
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POP3
My (strongly) preferred approach is to use a POP3 email client, like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird or any of a hundred or so others, and download your email to your PC. Once downloaded you can typically save individual messages however you like - my favorite approach is to create a special folder in the email program and copy things there.
One of the reasons I recommend it so strongly is that it's also my recommended approach to backing up your webmail, regardless of how long you plan to keep it. As I said above, stuff happens, and having all of your email saved on your PC (where you should also be backing it up along with all of your other important files) means that even if the webmail service goes away completely, you haven't lost your important messages.
Windows Live Hotmail now supports POP3, as does GMail. Yahoo, unfortunately, apparently only supports it in some countries. There are unofficial POP3 add-ons that may allow you to access Yahoo and other web mail services.
An alternative, of course, is to forward your important emails to a service, like perhaps GMail, that you can then download from.
Print to PDF
I think of this as more of an archival approach, but since almost every webmail service has some kind of function to print a message, you can use this function in conjunction with a PDF printer to create PDFs on your PC of specific emails that you want to save.
If you don't have a PDF printer, I'm partial to the free PDF Creator. Download and install that and you'll find a new "printer" on your machine. Anything you print to that printer will be saved as a PDF.
Here's your question, which I get by email, saved as a PDF, and displayed in Foxit Reader:
PDFs have become fairly universal, and as I said above, you can save just about anything you can print: email - plain or HTML - web pages, documents and more.
The downside is that once printed it's no longer email, so you can't easily use it again to, say, forward or reply. If that's your real intent then I'll refer you back to my first suggestion of downloading into an email client.
You can still print to PDF from there for archival, if you like.
Related:
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What are Windows Live Hotmail's POP3 and SMTP settings? Microsoft recently, finally, enabled POP3 and SMTP access to Hotmail accounts. I'll walk you through the settings.
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How do I backup my GMail? Relying on free email services - even GMail - can be an unnecessary risk. Fortunately GMail makes it possible, even easy, to backup your email.
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Can I read web mail using a pop3 mail reader? Web based email is handy but limited. Most do not allow direct access using a normal email program.
Article C3724 - May 7, 2009
I use gmail exclusively. All email from my main Comcast account (the one I gave to get access to this comment section) is automatically forwarded to my gmail account, which has really great spam filters. But I have a second comcast account which is used only for the purpose of saving important email. I simply forward it to myself at that account.
Posted by: Gene Thomas at May 7, 2009 8:34 AMBased on your recommendation above I installed PDF Creator. Sounded interesting. But, when I installed the software I was asked if I wanted to install Yahoo toolbar to my Firefox. I said no and unchecked no. I know to read the install options. Well, a Yahoo toolbar was installed anyway. I seem to recall you wrote on a subject similar to this recently-and not as an advocate. I uninstalled the whole mess this morning after installing it last night. Thought you'd want to know before recommending it again.
08-May-2009
AOL Mail also has an option to save at AOL or on your own machine.
Posted by: duane at May 12, 2009 11:20 AMJust a warning about the latest version of PDF creator 0.9.8. It's picked up a bad press in the forums because it compulsorily installs various other bits of s/w, added toolbars etc.
Maybe the earlier version 0.9.7 from Feb 2009 is OK, but I think I'll pass on this one, though I like the idea.
13-May-2009
I use Outlook Express and I keep E Mails in designated folders, just as you suggest.
This works fine.
Except........
When the Outlook Express file storage gets to around Two Gigabytes (mine was at 2.5 GB when it failed) the OE function goes belly up. The error report is 0x800C0133 and Microsoft's web site recognizes the problem. I have been on the MSFT desktop share with one of their technicians to no avail.
I have now created an extra Identity and I have split the OE files between two Identities.
What do you think ???
13-May-2009
PDFCreator didn't install any toolbars on my system. I simply followed the instructions.
Though I was wondering that this option should have been built-in like the XPS printer. And like it is for MS Office / OpenOffice
Posted by: umair at May 13, 2009 1:02 AMAt one time you could sign up with Yahoo and receive occassional offers from them and keep receiving the POP service. I did and been doing it for years.
Otherwise you could search the web for 'webmail' extensions from Thunderbird.
I currently use the Seamonkey email program (and have used Thunderbird - very similar), anyway once the emails are downloaded, I right-click on each I want to save and save it as a HTML file.
Then using Nero INCD, which allows to you to set up a CDRW (rewritable) as a mini hard-drive. I copy all my saved emails (and other documents) to a CDRW. When the CDRW gets full I copy everything from the CDRW to a CDR, format the CDRW and start over again.
I've been doing this for years with my documents, downloaded programs,pictures and whatever else I've wanted to save.
http://www.geocities.com/terryhollett2003/
Posted by: Terry Hollett at May 13, 2009 3:26 AMIt's all very well to talk about saving each e-mail via some program or another, but what your correspondent needs (and so do I) is a way to copy 3000 e-mails that already exist in Yahoo to the home computer with one click. Opening and forwarding every e-mail, even just the important ones, is not an option.
Those who don't want to use PDFCreator can use CutePDF or PrimePDF, or some other one--aren't they all about the same? CutePDF always works for me.
Michael
14-May-2009
I pay $20 yearly for Yahoo Plus which I put through Outlook. I didn't go with Gmail which does have IMAP capability (making things easier if you are syncing email on multiple computers/devices) because I liked the idea of getting the mail I wanted to save OFF the server.. Is that why you listed POP3 and not IMAP? because you don't want it to remain on the server? IMAP can also be slower than POP3 - maybe that was why...
Posted by: Sandy Smith at May 13, 2009 6:37 PMIn Yahoo email, you can right click the body of the email, in the box click "This Frame" > "Save This Frame As" and direct it to a folder I created in My Documents. Works pretty well in Yahoo mail anyway.
Posted by: Tim Latto at May 13, 2009 9:46 PM