Download webmail to files on your local computer
I've wanted to clear out my extremely full Excite.com e-mail account for a while, but as it's web-based e-mail, it has no way of batch downloading/saving messages, nor even batch forwarding. If you're a Gold subscriber, you can access your messages via POP3 e-mail, but I'm not.
However, I discovered a way that works for Excite, and should work for other webmail accounts such as Hotmail and so on. The Firefox web browser has an extension available for it called DownThemAll! that is a mass downloader. This can be used to hit links to e-mail messages in your inbox, and download the html page containing the message. One drawback is that you get the webmail code as well as the message itself, so your files are larger, but it sure beats clicking on and downloading each one of them individually.
Details:
Once this extension is installed and you have restarted Firefox, in your webmail inbox folder, right-click on an empty space, and select "DownThemAll!" The DTA interface will prompt you to make your selection. Scroll down until you start seeing links with Descriptions (in the Description column) matching your e-mail subjects. In Excite, all of my messages begin with the URL "http://e19.email.excite.com/msg_read.php?...", but I usually just match the Description to the subject of the first message.
Click the first matching description to highlight it, then scroll down to where descriptions matching your e-mails stop, hold down shift (don't release it until after you release the mouse button), and click the mouse once on the last description matching one of your messages. This will highlight all your messages. Next, right-click on the highlighted messages, and select the green "Check selected items" option. This will mark them all for downloading.
Pick what folder you want to save your files in - usually I store mine in a subfolder in Documents. For the renaming mask, enter in the following: *text*.htm <--This uses the name of the link for the filename (what you see in the Description column of DTA), which is usually the message subject, and gives them all a .htm extension, which will open with your web browser. I leave Inclusive filters and Additional filters alone.
Then click the Start! button, and it should start bulk downloading your e-mail messages into the folder of your choice. It may ask you what to do in the event of messages that have the same subject - I just tell it to automatically rename the file (e.g. add _001, _002, etc to the end of the filename for each additional download with the same subject) and use these settings for this session.
Tips:
This also works if you want to save a forum thread. For example in phpBB, after you're in the first page of the thread, look for DTA links described with numbers (page numbers of each page in the thread). Select those. Since the individual page links on phpBB don't have descriptive names, usually use a mask such as topic name - pg*text*.htm <--So I get files named "topic name - pg1.htm" (and ...pg2, etc).
Under the Advanced tab in DTA's preferences, I have my max chunks per download set to 1 (Disabled). To avoid placing excessive load on your e-mail service or forum (and also to avoid being banned), you may want to set yours this way.
In Firefox, you can find the DTA preferences under the Tools menu -> DownThemAll -> Preferences, or just click the underlined Preferences link at the very lower right-most corner of the DTA window when you're selecting links to download.
If you find yourself needing to rename a large group of files*, because you have redundant beginning filenames, I suggest using Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit (PFrank). It can do batch rename jobs under Windows operating systems, and it received a 4/5 rating on Tucows with 92% popularity. I've used it and I can see why. The preview feature is quite effective.
*-Of course, Linux and *NIX users that know how can do this right from their command line. Yet another reason to abandon Windows and go to Linux - the extreme limitedness of Windows' rename.exe command ;)
However, I discovered a way that works for Excite, and should work for other webmail accounts such as Hotmail and so on. The Firefox web browser has an extension available for it called DownThemAll! that is a mass downloader. This can be used to hit links to e-mail messages in your inbox, and download the html page containing the message. One drawback is that you get the webmail code as well as the message itself, so your files are larger, but it sure beats clicking on and downloading each one of them individually.Details:
Once this extension is installed and you have restarted Firefox, in your webmail inbox folder, right-click on an empty space, and select "DownThemAll!" The DTA interface will prompt you to make your selection. Scroll down until you start seeing links with Descriptions (in the Description column) matching your e-mail subjects. In Excite, all of my messages begin with the URL "http://e19.email.excite.com/msg_read.php?...", but I usually just match the Description to the subject of the first message.Click the first matching description to highlight it, then scroll down to where descriptions matching your e-mails stop, hold down shift (don't release it until after you release the mouse button), and click the mouse once on the last description matching one of your messages. This will highlight all your messages. Next, right-click on the highlighted messages, and select the green "Check selected items" option. This will mark them all for downloading.
Pick what folder you want to save your files in - usually I store mine in a subfolder in Documents. For the renaming mask, enter in the following: *text*.htm <--This uses the name of the link for the filename (what you see in the Description column of DTA), which is usually the message subject, and gives them all a .htm extension, which will open with your web browser. I leave Inclusive filters and Additional filters alone.
Then click the Start! button, and it should start bulk downloading your e-mail messages into the folder of your choice. It may ask you what to do in the event of messages that have the same subject - I just tell it to automatically rename the file (e.g. add _001, _002, etc to the end of the filename for each additional download with the same subject) and use these settings for this session.Tips:
This also works if you want to save a forum thread. For example in phpBB, after you're in the first page of the thread, look for DTA links described with numbers (page numbers of each page in the thread). Select those. Since the individual page links on phpBB don't have descriptive names, usually use a mask such as topic name - pg*text*.htm <--So I get files named "topic name - pg1.htm" (and ...pg2, etc).
Under the Advanced tab in DTA's preferences, I have my max chunks per download set to 1 (Disabled). To avoid placing excessive load on your e-mail service or forum (and also to avoid being banned), you may want to set yours this way.In Firefox, you can find the DTA preferences under the Tools menu -> DownThemAll -> Preferences, or just click the underlined Preferences link at the very lower right-most corner of the DTA window when you're selecting links to download.
If you find yourself needing to rename a large group of files*, because you have redundant beginning filenames, I suggest using Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit (PFrank). It can do batch rename jobs under Windows operating systems, and it received a 4/5 rating on Tucows with 92% popularity. I've used it and I can see why. The preview feature is quite effective.
*-Of course, Linux and *NIX users that know how can do this right from their command line. Yet another reason to abandon Windows and go to Linux - the extreme limitedness of Windows' rename.exe command ;)
posted by Wireball at 8:57 PM
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