yahoo pop: how can I download Sent messages?

Hi, I've been using yahoo's web-based email, and I need a solution to
save my Sent messages.


I switched a few months ago to yahoo's premium email account. The
premium account offers pop mail access, but I haven't been able to
figure out a way to get my Sent messages downloaded onto my PC.

I checked their documentation and emailed their support, but amazingly,
that doesn't seem to be a feature they offer. The only suggestion they
had was to create a filter that would redirect email into the Inbox,
but it's not clear whether it works retroactively. (I couldn't get it
to work). also, doing that would be really messy.

Before yahoo, I used Fastmail's premium IMAP web-based email, and I had
no problem downloading Sent mail. (Yes, call me an idiot for violating
the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule).

Is the yahoo support person just ill-informed? Or is there something
intrinsic to pop mail access that doesn't allow access to Sent mail
folders? Yahoo mail is one of the big guys in the industry; why
haven't they figured out a solution for this?

I made a decision a few years ago to rely on web-based email (for
reasons of synchronization and access and archiving). But saving Sent
mail is a critical requirement. And now I have 1500 messages in my Sent
box which I may have to download manually, which could take hours, if
not days. Does anybody have any ideas about how to retrieve those sent
messages? And how to avoid this in the future?

Robert Nagle
idiotprogrammer

Re: yahoo pop: how can I download Sent messages?

We all make mistakes. Programmers in particular are so detail focused
that they rather often miss the big picture. I'm not knowledgeable
about Yahoo email specifics, but since you asked, I have some practical
suggestions that may at least be helpful to avoid this in the future.

Also an opinionated suggestion that may only be interesting. (Yahoo
partisans should not read following the rant on.)


Suggestion 1 is to reverse course. Do this now and stop the damage
while you figure out how to fix the mess at Yahoo. If it still ain't
broke, go back to Fastmail's premium IMAP web-based email (if they can
POP other sites without deletion-- see below). It's IMAP that has
access to folders other than the inbox. I've never experienced POP3
email that worked on anything except the inbox.


Suggestion 2, is to squeeze the necessary script out of Yahoo support,
especially since you are paying for a premium email account. Yahoo
support seems to have the correct idea of getting your old mail back
into the inbox, if they actually know how to do it. If necessary,
insist that some senior support person help solve your problem.

It's easy with Netzero. I have a free Netzero account, and I can move
checkoff-selected mail from other folders to the inbox. I'm guessing
that I would be able to pop-down anything in the inbox, subject to
vagaries of the POP LAST command and the email client one is using.

(I can't test this because Netzero took away pop access for free users
a year or so ago, after they suddenly realized they really weren't
"Defenders of the Free World" as they originally promoted themselves.
They claim that paying Megamail customers can get back pop access for
~$9.96/yr. I would like to have paid for Megamail, but weirdly, they
prevented their many anonymous users from renting Megamail, by refusing
money orders for Megamail via USPS.)


Suggestion 3 is to consider that the real problem here is that you are
not backed up. I don't back up hard drive files as often as I should
either, but at least I have auto-backup email. It's a simple
arrangement, but backup email providers must be selected for the
necessary features.

I understand your point about needing a web email interface. I suggest
that you also need a local (better service) ISP shell account to back
up all incoming email. Ideally your ISP shell should be IMAP capable,
to more easily manage the backup folders. But mine isn't IMAP, and it
works flawlessly when I manage it using Pine folders. (Thanks to the
University of Washington for the superb free tool of Unix Pine.)

The way the simple backup arrangement works is to have all incoming
email sent to the ISP shell's email address, either directly or by
forwarding from multiple addresses (they must allow forwarding, and
most free web email sites don't). Then your web mail site must be able
to regularly POP the ISP shell. (Negotiate how often to allow POPing
when choosing the shell's ISP.) The web mail POP client must be able to
tell the ISP shell to not delete the mail and to leave it on the
server, which is a normal POP3 feature. This creates a backup duplicate
that you have direct access to with Pine, and indirectly with most Unix
tools, FTP, etc.

Once a month the ISP shell's inbox should cleaned of spam (or not if
you can buy plenty of file space), and moved to a numerical month
folder with some form like "200503ML.BAK". This form of foldername is
self sorting no matter to what OS it gets transferred, and the 8+3-ness
avoids future loss of a long file name in MS-OS's. I make each month's
folder manually, because it's easy to do in Pine.

If you program, a modest Unix shell script should be able to make a new
folder and move the contents of the inbox for you on the first of every
month. I haven't written such a script, but I think it will be a "Cron"
script. http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html
Before you choose an ISP for a Unix shell, ask if they allow users to
run Cron scripts. Some ISP's apparently don't.

One needs to rent enough ISP file space as to, say, hold over a year's
worth before FTP downloading it all to a CD-RW backup disc. With spam
removed, I currently seem to be accumulating about 3 or 4 Mb of email
per winter month.


(rant on)

Suggestion 4 is to look up the word "yahoo"* and think about whether
you want that word in most or all of your business and personal
correspondence. I can appreciate the carefree attitude of people who
don't take word roots seriously, but I'm not one of them.

My opinion is that Yahoo!, the web directory and email provider
company, had bad karma from day 1, due to its culturally disrespectful
choice of a name. ("culturalist"?) Yahoo!'s TV yodel-singing-cartoon
advertising of several years ago could not resist stereotyping the long
suffering and impoverished residents of Appalachia, as hillbillies.

Appalachia from Maine to Alabama is 1500 miles of mountainous land,
infertile for farming. Since all the good land was taken by 1790
following the founding of the U.S. (much was annexed by wealthy land
companies), many poor English-speaking immigrants from Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales settled in Appalachia. The Appalachians and their
descendants could not earn a decent living, even as much of the new
U.S. prospered from farming. Infertile land set the stage for 20th
century rural poverty, that was made worse by environmentally
destructive strip mining until the 1970's. The chorus of John Prine's
1971 song "Paradise" sums up that era: "Mr. Pebody's coal train has
hauled it away."
Http://www.coquet-shack.com/lyrics/Prine/Paradise_2302.htm

Shame on the controllers of Yahoo! Shame on such incredibly rich U.S.
people for unnecessarily diminishing the reputation of U.S. Appalachian
poor, for a clearly unnecessary commercial gain.

I suggest that they redeem themselves by changing their name. Esso
changed its name to Exxon, so Yahoo! could change to YaxxOn!, which
sort of works for an email and instant messaging provider.


As for their quintessential "ain't", it was probably proper English
earlier than 1778, and Appalachians have culturally preserved it. In
school we were warned against "ain't" as not being the King's English,
but in truth, it was taught to us to avoid hillbilly/white-trash
discrimination. "Ain't" has made a modest comeback. Well-educated
people now occasionally use the term for informal emphasis, written
dialect, and in phrases to suggest unvarnished truth and rural wisdom:
"It ain't so."; "If it ain't broke don't fix it."
http://everything.blockstackers.com/index.pl?node_id=77684

----------
*http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.0?stage=1&wo rd=yahoo
The noun "yahoo" has 2 senses in WordNet.
1. yokel, rube, hick, yahoo, hayseed, bumpkin, chawbacon -- (not very
intelligent or interested in culture)
2. Yahoo -- (one of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the
Houyhnhnms in a novel by Jonathan Swift)
----------

Maybe you ain't an idiot, maybe you are jest a Yahoo? (Sorry)

Al


idiotprogrammer wrote:
> Hi, I've been using yahoo's web-based email, and I need a
> solution to save my Sent messages.
>
>
> I switched a few months ago to yahoo's premium email account.
> The premium account offers pop mail access, but I haven't been
> able to figure out a way to get my Sent messages downloaded onto
> my PC.
>
> I checked their documentation and emailed their support, but
> amazingly, that doesn't seem to be a feature they offer. The
> only suggestion they had was to create a filter that would
> redirect email into the Inbox, but it's not clear whether it
> works retroactively. (I couldn't get it to work). also, doing
> that would be really messy.
>
> Before yahoo, I used Fastmail's premium IMAP web-based email,
> and I had no problem downloading Sent mail. (Yes, call me an
> idiot for violating the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule).
>
> Is the yahoo support person just ill-informed? Or is there
> something intrinsic to pop mail access that doesn't allow access
> to Sent mail folders? Yahoo mail is one of the big guys in the
> industry; why haven't they figured out a solution for this?
>
> I made a decision a few years ago to rely on web-based email
> (for reasons of synchronization and access and archiving). But
> saving Sent mail is a critical requirement. And now I have 1500
> messages in my Sent box which I may have to download manually,
> which could take hours, if not days. Does anybody have any ideas
> about how to retrieve those sent messages? And how to avoid this
> in the future?
>
> Robert Nagle
> idiotprogrammer

Re: yahoo pop: how can I download Sent messages?

Thanks for your thoughts (and rants).

Part of the problem is that yahoo doesn't document what it can and
can't do. It would have been easy to say on their promotional material,
warning: can only download from your Inbox. But they did not do it.

I had been trying to avoid an ISP solution. ISP's have never been
particularly reliable, even the big ones like Roadrunner. I'm not a big
fan of yahoo, but I did like their ability to create throwaway
addresses. And their integration with other services (yahoo groups,
etc).

Yeah, I'm a been of a linux hacker, and writing a cron job is not
beyond my capabilities.

Swiftian references aside, sometimes yahoo gets it right, but here's a
case where it hasn't.

Robert Nagle, idiotprogrammer

Re: yahoo pop: how can I download Sent messages?

idiotprogrammer wrote:
> Hi, I've been using yahoo's web-based email, and I need a solution to
> save my Sent messages.
>
> I switched a few months ago to yahoo's premium email account. The
> premium account offers pop mail access, but I haven't been able to
> figure out a way to get my Sent messages downloaded onto my PC.
[deleted]

You could use YPOPS! [1] instead of, or in addition to, your normal
POP3 access (assuming that that is what you currently use).

YPOPS! is a little server which 'speaks' HTTP on the Yahoo! Mail side
(i.e. to Yahoo! Mail it looks like you are using a web-'browser') and
POP3 (and SMTP if you want) on your mailer's (MUA's) side.

YPOPS! can download messages from any folder, i.e. also from the
"Sent" folder. Note however that the messages will be downloaded *to*
the "Inbox" folder of your mailer/MUA. That is because (AFAIK) POP3 does
not offer any possibility to know/specify a destination folder. I.e.
this limitation is not Yahoo! Mail's 'fault' or your mailer's/MUA's
'fault', but POP3's 'fault'. Of course *after* downloading, you can
*move* the messages to any desired folder.

I hope this helps.

> Before yahoo, I used Fastmail's premium IMAP web-based email, and I had
> no problem downloading Sent mail. (Yes, call me an idiot for violating
> the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule).
>
> Is the yahoo support person just ill-informed? Or is there something
> intrinsic to pop mail access that doesn't allow access to Sent mail
> folders? Yahoo mail is one of the big guys in the industry; why
> haven't they figured out a solution for this?

Perhaps this is the key, i.e. *IMAP* offering the desired
functionality, which *POP3* does not have. I.e. you probably have a
('missing') *protocol* problem instead of a Yahoo! problem. I.e. you can
'blame' Yahoo! for not offering IMAP (assuming they don't offer it), but
can not blame them for not doing the impossible.

[deleted]

[1] http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net