July 11, 2008, 9:16 a.m.
posted by neverloop
Read Yahoo! Mail in Your Preferred Email Client
The standard way to read Yahoo! Mail is with a web browser, but some freely available software called YPOPs! can deliver your Yahoo! Mail to your favorite email client.
Most of us have several email accounts on several systems: one for personal email, two or three for work, and maybe even a Yahoo! Mail account on the side. Most of these accounts are read with Post Office Protocol (POP) email clients such as Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunder bird, or Mac's Mail. But Yahoo! Mail is designed to be read through a web browser. This is handy when you're away from your standard computer, but it can be a hassle when you're on your home machine. To read all of your mail and get completely caught up, you need to open both your email client and a web browser for Yahoo! Mail.
One way to bring all of your email together is to add your standard POP accounts to Yahoo! Mail [Hack #54] so that you can read everything through a web browser.(This is another perk when you're on the road.) But if you're perfectly happy with your email client, there are also ways to route your Yahoo! Mail there.
The most direct route is by upgrading your Yahoo! Mail account to Yahoo! Mail Plus. For an annual fee of $20 (at the time of this writing), Yahoo! Mail Plus adds various features to your account, including direct POP Access. With the upgrade, you'll be able to retrieve your Yahoo! Mail in the same way that you get mail from your other accounts.
Another route is via YPOPs!, open source software that was put together by a handful of developers working in their spare time to solve this very problem. YPOPs! turns your machine into a minimail server and at the same time dissects the Yahoo! Mail web interface, translating web text into standard email.
Installing YPOPs!
YPOPs! is available for just about every platform, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. To grab a copy, browse to http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net, click the Downloads link toward the top of the page, and find the version for your operating system.
If you're on a Windows machine, you can simply click the download file and install the program. The installation program will ask if you want YPOPs! to start when Windows starts, and you can click No here. (You can easily change this setting once the program is installed.) Once you're finished, the program will start and a new icon will appear in your system tray, as shown in Figure.
The YPOPs!System tray icon
Right-click the new icon and choose Configure from the menu to set up some preferences. Click the Receiving Email preferences shown in Figure.
The YPOPs! configuration screen
To play it safe, uncheck the "Empty Trash on exit" and"Empty Bulk Mail on exit" options. This will ensure you'll have a backup of every email at Yahoo!. Once you've used YPOPs! for a while, you might want to change these settings, but it's a good idea to proceed cautiously while you're learning how the program works.
Once these preferences are set, click OK, and you'll be ready to move onto the final step: configuring your mail client to talk with YPOPs!.
Configuring Your Client
The instructions for configuring your mail client vary a bit between different applications, and the YPOPs! website has step-by-step instructions for most programs. Browse to the site and choose Configuring Mail Clients in the column on the left, under Documentation. All applications follow a similar pattern, though, that goes something like this:
Open your mail client and create a new account.(This is often found under File
New Account or under Tools E-Mail Accounts.)Include your full name and your Yahoo! Mail email address.
Choose POP or POP3 as the method of delivery.
Set the incoming server to 127.0.0.1, which is computer shorthand for "this machine."
Set the outgoing server to 127.0.0.1 as well.
Set the username to your Yahoo! Mail username (your email address without the @yahoo.com on the end).
And that's it! You should now be able to receive your email from the comfort of your favorite client. Keep in mind that you can access your Yahoo! Mail this way only when the YPOPs! program is running, so it always needs to be on in the background. If you find that you like receiving your mail this way, just click the Configure menu item again and go to the Miscellaneous preferences. You can check the option to automatically start YPOPs! when Windows starts, and you won't have to think about the program again.
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