How do I download only certain emails from my Yahoo account?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #26, I look at a few ways to save individual emails out of
Yahoo.

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Downloading Yahoo email

The answer that you’re looking for; I don’t think exists.

• I don’t know of a way to download only specific emails.

Save as a printed pdf

What I typically recommend for scenarios like this is:

• Don’t necessarily copy it to a text document;

• Instead, install a print-to-PDF utility like CutePDF;

• Then, print the particular email you want to save to a PDF document.

• And save your emails as a collection of PDFs.

Is your email backed up?

That being said, there is another approach that I think would be better for you: I would strongly suggest (if you have the ability) to use an email client on your desktop.

Thunderbird is what I typically recommend. Outlook and many of the others would suffice. Configure it to use either POP 3 (if it’s available for you depending on where you are at) or IMAP, which I know, is available for all Yahoo users.

• Use that to download all of your email to your PC.

Downloading is a backup

Now, I know that’s probably not what you are looking for. But the reason I suggest that, so strongly, is that if you are keeping all of your email on Yahoo’s servers, it’s in only one place and it’s not backed up.

I think that it’s incredibly important for you to figure out a way to backup your email. The easiest way to do that is to install a desktop email program and connect it to your email account: your Yahoo account. Set it up to (over time, of course, since you’re probably starting with a lot of email) download all of your email to your PC.

That way, if anything ever happens to your Yahoo account, you’ll have all of your emails saved somewhere safe.

Then, once it’s on your desktop, once it’s in an email program, you can then decide whether or not you still need to keep those special emails separately or if having them as part of this entire download is sufficient for your needs.