PG Offline is free to use for 30 days, but costs $20 thereafter. It puts the messages into a .mdb format (Access database), and provides for nicely formatted browsing of the messages via the PG Offline tool. But saving it as another format is not straight-forward.
The best way I found is to select "Messages - Show Digest" from the menu to view a certain number of the messages on a single page, then hit CTRL-A and CTRL-C to do a select-all and copy of the text, and then paste it into a text file. The digest window does not always display all the messages correctly, but the data is there* when you paste it into the text file.
The above seems the best option to me; I also tried the below, but it is more complex, and for a group with a lot of messages, it does not seem practical to me to archive them as individual files.
*On further testing, not all of the data is there, after all... some messages seem to be missing the text. Oh well. The *.mdb file can also be opened in MS Excel, but the message texts are not easy to read as they include HTML tags. Also note that the *.mdb file includes the userid/password used for downloading the messages, although in an encrypted format.
messages-1.14.tar.gz lets you download messages as individual text files. Each file includes a lengthy section of email-headers, and some odd parts at the end which apparently Yahoo adds.
It requires Perl to run. It also requires the Crypt::SSLeay module, which does not come as part of the ActivePerl package, and is not downloadable from the ActivePerl ppm repository, as they are a Canadian company and do not have the required permit for distributing cryptographic software.
A Windows version of
ActivePerl can be downloaded and installed in order to run the Perl script.
Crypt::SSLeay can be downloaded from the
uwinnipeg PPM repository using the PPM tool which comes with the ActivePerl installation. I first tried installing it from the command line, but that did not seem to work.
You may also need to add the Perl\bin installation folder to your PATH environment variable (if you didn't select that option during installation of ActivePerl), so that ssleay32.dll will be found when running the perl script.
Use this command to run the Perl script:
[\perl\bin\]perl -T yahoo2maildir.pl {group name} [{begin message id} [{end message id}]]
NOTE: if you enter the wrong password, you get this misleading message:
[INFO] Successfully logged in as [your userid].
Couldn't get message count
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