outlook classic 2019 saved a yahoo mail account
If I wasn't such a nerd when it comes to email, a bunch of email would probably have been lost forever.
In an ultra rare instance where I actually helped somebody out with a computer problem thing, I successfully moved about 13.5 gigs of email off a Yahoo Mail account so it could become usable again. Yes, this was saving a Yahoo mail account for somebody else since I moved off all web-based email a long time ago.
For years, Yahoo had a 1TB storage limit for email. Recently, Yahoo said there will be no more free 1TB of storage and now the free limit is 20GB. Yahoo also of course says sure, you can get your 1TB back if you want, but now you have to pay for it.
The goal was to not pay that toll, so it was time to figure out how to download a mail backup and then free up space on the Yahoo mail account so it could continue to be usable.
I'm sitting in front of this person's computer, which had a standard Windows 11 installation. Right. Now I have to figure out how to download the mail and back it up locally. Right. Now I'm thinking okay, Windows must come with some kind of email client. I look around and I see two Outlooks. One that's some "new" web-based thing, and another, Outlook Classic from 2019. Outlook Classic appears to support local accounts, which is what I wanted. Sounds good to me, I'll use this.
This is where things temporarily got bad.
In order to download mail from a Yahoo account to a mail client, an "app password" must be generated on the Yahoo side. I go to do this, but I'm getting all sorts of warnings and that phone authentication is required. The person who had this Yahoo account was nearby, I told them to get their phone so I can get that stupid separate app password set up. After some juggling around between the computer and the phone, the app password is generated. Okay, good.
I'm successfully able to get the Yahoo mail account working in Outlook 2019, but hold on there, cowboy, we're not done yet. Not even close.
Now I have to figure out a way to set up a local way to store email so I can actually, y'know, back it up.
This is where the real nightmare happened, because wow, what a process. In order to actually set up a local place to store mail, it required setting up a local PST. That in itself wasn't a big deal, but finding where to do it was where the actual nightmare was. Teeny tiny menu options spread all over Outlook Classic. It was not that different from how mail used to be set up a quarter century ago. Remember Windows 2000? Remember Office 2000? That was the experience, and I'm not exaggerating. It was like I was dealing with email in the early 2000s all over again, except with a modernist Windows UI. Weird. I plodded on.
Okay, I finally get a local PST set up. One file, and I plop it right on the desktop so I know where it is.
Done yet? Nope.
Turns out this person's PC was low on space, and I'm about to synchronize many gigs of email from Yahoo locally. I ask the person I'm doing this backup for if they have an external drive or USB stick I can move files to. They have one. I move a bunch of stuff off the computer, reclaimed the space, and now there's about 55GB free of local space to use. Good.
But we're STILL NOT DONE.
Outlook Classic is now downloading/synchronizing all the email off that Yahoo mail account, and that's not fast even with the fastest of internet connections. I said okay, just leave this computer on overnight and hopefully all the mail will be synchronized tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes.
I go to the computer, check Outlook Classic vs. Yahoo mail to make sure the number of emails match up, which was also a minor nightmare because getting the total number count of emails is annoying to acquire for both Yahoo and Outlook Classic. After hunting and pecking around, I figured out how to get those numbers, because if they match, then the sync was successful. The numbers matched. Good. All the email is synchronized.
Now I have a giant PST of all that Yahoo mail. I do a few tests of connecting/disconnecting it to Outlook Classic to make sure it works. It does. Good.
After that comes documentation time. Documenting what? How to "attach" a PST to Outlook 2019. I screenshot the whole process, screen for screen, with little additional notes and all, and give that to the person the Yahoo account belongs to. I then step them through that whole process to make sure they know how to do it. They do so, make some additional little notes of their own, done. Now they know how to access the backed up email if they ever have to. Good.
After that - because WE'RE STILL NOT DONE YET - copy that entire big honkin' PST file twice. Once to an external drive, once to a USB stick since this person had both. Done. If one PST corrupts/fails/whatever, a backup is ready.
Then FINALLY comes the point where email can be safely deleted out of the Yahoo mail account. I ask the owner of the account if it's okay to only keep email from 2025 and delete everything else. User agrees. I head on in there and mass delete everything older than 2025.
Done yet? Almost. I had to wait for that Yahoo mail to catch up and reindex. It did so a little while later.
DONE. Finally. The Yahoo mail account is safely well within the storage limit and can be used normally once again.
Why does anybody use a Yahoo mail account?
Answer: It's the only email account the user has and it's used to authenticate to everything they have.
At the time I write this, there are Yahoo mail accounts OVER 25 YEARS OLD. Yahoo mail itself is almost 28 years old. Yahoo mail isn't just old enough to drink, but also old enough to rent a car!
I doubt there are many young people signing up for Yahoo mail accounts these days. But as for old accounts, there has to be many millions of them.
Having over 20GB of email sounds insane to most people. But if you were using a free email service that touted 1TB of storage for free, wouldn't you take advantage of that? A bunch of Yahoo mail users did.
Now imagine if all your stuff, that being your banking, social media, forum accounts, EVERYTHING... was all connected to that Yahoo mail account to authenticate with, and oopsie, that 1TB is now 20GB and you need to free up space to fix your busted email account.
When I say busted, I mean truly busted. A Yahoo mail account over the storage limit is effectively locked. You can login to it, but cannot send nor receive any mail AT ALL until storage space within the account is freed back up.
What do you do? Abandoning the email account for another is an option, but for many, that isn't an option at all. That Yahoo mail account has to work because so much stuff is connected to it. Deleting email? Also an option, but for many that's also no-go territory.
If you figured out how to download and back up your Yahoo mail, good for you. Seriously, I mean that.
You might be somebody that uses a Yahoo mail for a lot of stuff, so you figured out how to download/backup your email to keep the account functioning correctly. Very good. Give yourself several pats on the back for that one, because you just saved a bunch of money.
However, I'm sure there will be more than a few Yahoo users who will pay Yahoo to get their 1TB of storage back until they can figure out a way to download/backup everything.
Backing up a Yahoo mail account for free is doable using Outlook Classic 2019, provided you have the space for the backup, and somewhere to put the backup when finished. Easy? Not at all. But doable.
Published 2025 Aug 17
