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Chrome Application To Download Messages

Page history last edited by Mark Fletcher 8 years, 3 months ago Saved with comment

I have created a Chrome Application to download Yahoo Group messages. It is based on the YahooMembersApplication Chrome Application.

 

You will need Chrome for this and you must be able to view the group's messages. Unless you are a moderator, all email addresses in the messages will be obfuscated. After downloading the messages you can save them in an mbox format file.

 

Download the Zip file YahooMessagesApplication-0.55.zip, then create a directory for it, then copy the Zip file contents to the directory. Then go to Chrome and click the icon in the upper-right that has three bars. It will say "Customize and control Google Chrome" when you hover the mouse over it. From the menu choose "Tools" | "Extensions". In the upper-right is a checkbox for "Developer mode"; click on it if it is not selected to select it. Then in the upper-left you will see a button saying "Load unpacked extension...", click it. You will then need to select the folder you saved the files from the Zip file to. You should get an application called "Yahoo Messages Export".

 

Then in the upper-left of Chrome there should be a toolbar button called "Apps". The icon for it is a multi-color matrix. Click on it. The Yahoo Group Messages Export application should appear there; click on it. It is a very basic application, nothing fancy. For "Group" enter your Yahoo Group name, such as GroupManagersForum. You also must enter a start and end message number[1] to download. Click Go and watch the count of messages being downloaded. Yahoo may prevent you from downloading all of your messages at one time; you may have to download the messages over a period of hours or days. Once the download is complete, click Save to save the messages in mbox format.

 

Footnotes

  1. If you set the End Number higher than the actual last message in the group then the application will not terminate (it will count indefinitely). To stop it, change the End Number to a message number that actually exists, then click the "Go" button again.

Comments (12)

iwillnot said

at 6:59 am on Feb 1, 2016

Hi Mark,

I would like to say thank you for this tool. I've been trying to figure out what tool is usable based on the first few search queries of "yahoo groups download messages conversations" but most of them are outdated crawling tools that used to work for the previous Yahoo! Groups version.

I'll be linking to this site on archiveteam.org so that users who are looking to download their messages can find this.

Thanks again!

Darren

Robert said

at 8:46 am on Jul 31, 2019

Hi Mark,

Another note to thank you for this. Really easy to use and exactly what I needed.

Rob

Scott DuBose said

at 11:30 pm on Oct 22, 2019

Does this still work? I get "Yahoo's rate limiter kicked in and we were not able to download all messages." Is that true or did I not so something correctly?

Shal said

at 12:09 am on Oct 25, 2019

Scott, ask on GMF - few will see the question here.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GroupManagersForum/info

It's been too long, I don't remember if this tool has a delay control to limit the rate. But the instructions do caution against trying to download too many at once.

Karen Crespy said

at 9:08 pm on Nov 3, 2019

I'm trying to download the messages from a yahoo group, and was happy to find this. I followed these until "You should get an application called "Yahoo Messages Export"."
No files are showing up in the folder -- I'm using chrome, and I've unzipped the folder.
Can someone help?

Scott DuBose said

at 9:33 pm on Nov 3, 2019

Karen... I never got this one to work... I had success using PG Offline... http://www.personalgroupware.com/. Using that I downloaded about 40k messages each from three Yahoo Groups. I did have trouble getting photos and files to download, but very glad to have the messages.

Karen Crespy said

at 9:32 pm on Nov 4, 2019

thanks -- I'm getting a warning: Windows protected your PC
Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
I can't find any info one way or another on this. I ran a scan that came back clear.

Scott DuBose said

at 9:36 pm on Nov 4, 2019

Allow it to proceed

space said

at 5:13 pm on Nov 25, 2019

I can't download any more than about 10 messages without the "Yahoo's rate limiter kicked in and we were not able to download all messages" error.

I also get the error "We downloaded 9 messages. 4 messages were missed because of Yahoo internal errors. The missed message numbers are: #20 #24 #28 #29"

With nearly 350000 messages in the group, this is not a practical way to work.

Wat do?

Wilson Logan said

at 12:43 am on Nov 26, 2019

This is odd... I've had reports of people downloading 100k+ messages in one sitting with PG Offline.

Is there something about this tool that particularly irritates Yahoo ?

Moria said

at 4:31 pm on Dec 14, 2019

Hello folks, I'm writing this on Dec 14, so obviously I'm at the VERY last minute.
I'm so grateful to find this extension, as the other options I've been able to locate do not work for me, at all.

I have been able to install the extension and it is now retrieving messages from the group I MOST want to save. Yeah!

I wanted to note a step in the directions that I found very difficult, in case anyone else is still trying to export content from their yahoogroups.

Here's the part that where the directions were not enough for me to follow:

"You should get an application called "Yahoo Messages Export

Then in the upper-left of Chrome there should be a toolbar button called "Apps". The icon for it is a multi-color matrix."

IN BETWEEN those 2 lines, I would like it to say "Open a new Chrome browser window".

Once I did that (missing) step, all was good.

Prior to that I was looking all over the place in windows that were already open. And refreshing them. And searching help for chrome extensions. And so on.

Thanks again for this VERY helpful help with this issue that is urgent (because I didn't do it until now!)

:)

Karen Crespy said

at 11:29 pm on Dec 15, 2019

It appears to download messages and then I get a message that 0 were downloaded. "100 messages were missed because of Yahoo internal errors."
Any ideas? I am locked out of downloading any more from PG Offline because I hit their limit of allowable downloads.
Thanks

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