How to download Yahoo Gmail mails to my pc

Dear Friends,

I want to download my emails from Yahoo and Gmail to my pc (hard disk). Both my mail accounts are regular ones ie not paid for. So I did some search on the net and did come across this e-mail client called Thunderbird. I installed in on my pc with Win 7 on it and configured the same as per the instruction on a site. But I am not able to save a copy of all my mails from both Yahoo and Gmail to a folder on my pc. One important thing is that I just want to have a copy of the mails and do not want to delete them from inboxes on the company serves ie Gmail and Yahoo. I want to save each of the mails as an individual file in a format that I can read using a free program if necessary. I guess that they will not be MS Word readable, notepad or wordpad.

Is there a proper site that you know of with clear and easy to follow instructions on how to set up and use this client, mozilla thunderbird?

Is there any other free, e-mail client that is easier than thunderbird you might have used successfully on a Win 7 pc? If yes, then please let me know. Thanks a lot.

Thunderbird is good. Set it up to keep a copy of the mails on the server. Also set it up to download emails from the beginning of time.

Gmail has a feature which allows you to archive downloaded emails. Whereas for Yahoo, you have to do it at the app level.

You can also consider POPing in mails from and to Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail also. As a second backup copy.

Thunderbird is correct choice!

Instead of POP try IMAP! And then copy important emails to Local folders. That we you will avoid lots of junk.

Yahoo and Gmail both require you to have IMAP enabled in settings.

In Gmail IMAP is free. In Yahoo - their India hosted servers allow POP/IMAP free. But US servers dont (dont know if they changed this policy to compete with Gmail)

Use IMAP
Google IMAP Settings:

Incoming server address: imap.gmail.com
Port: 993
TLS/SSL required: yes


Outgoing mail server: smtp.gmail.com
Port : 465
TLS/SSL required: yes

I use eM Client software.