How to Forward Yahoo Mail to Gmail

Tom Merritt says that if you're making a switch, you can get your old email in your new inbox without having to pay.

Recently, Karan wrote in and asked: I want to forward all of my email automatically onto Gmail, which Yahoo won't do unless I sign up to its premium version that I cannot afford. Is there a third-party way of automatically forwarding all incoming email to Gmail from Yahoo? Yes Karan, there is−sort of. Let me tell you first what you need to do no matter what approach you’re going to have. I’ve got a couple of approaches after that. Go to your Yahoo address and set up a notice that’s going to tell people of your new address with Gmail. Go to Options, then "Mail Options" in Yahoo. Select "Vacation Response." Check the box marked "Enable auto-response during your vacation." And then set that end date as far out as you can. And write a short note explaining what's up. That takes care of a lot of people know about your new address. Now here are two methods for actually forwarding the email without paying for Yahoo plus. They each meet with varying degrees of success. You’ll see why. This first method works for me, but it hasn’t worked for everyone. Let’s give it a shot. Go to Gmail. Click settings. Choose Accounts and Import. Under Check Mail Using POP3, click Add a POP3 account. Enter your Yahoo address. Press Next. Put in your password. Press Add Account. It'll take a bit, but in a few minutes, your Yahoo email should start showing up in your Gmail inbox. Now as I said, that works for me and I don't pay for Yahoo Plus. But it didn't work for a test account I opened new. The second method you can try involves running some programs on your Windows computer. This means that email will only be forwarded when your computer is on and connected to the Internet then you had to have Windows. Download these two programs: Easy email forwarding from e-eeasy.com−Windows only, sorry Mac folks and Ypops from ypopsemail.com. Install and run Ypops. This is probably a program you want to run any time you boot Windows. Now install and run Easy Email Forward. Here's how to configure it. 1. Right click the Easy e-mail icon in the system tray and click Mail Settings. 2. Under Application, check Run at start-up. 3. Click the small red folder icon for accounts setup. 4. In the accounts management window, put in your yahoo email address. 5. Under Account Type, select YPOPS. 6. Enter your Yahoo password. 7. In Forward To, enter your Gmail address. 8. Now you need to enter an SMTP address. That’s a mail server. Any SMTP will do. If you have an email account from your ISP, you can just use that SMTP address. If you can't find one, try using Gmail’s. It's smtp.gmail.com port 465 with SSL. And check needs auth. Enter your SMTP username and password. 9. Click save and close the accounts management window. Once you close the Easy Email window it will by default check Yahoo for mail to forward every five minutes, that as long as YPOPS is running. So make sure YPOPS is running. If your SMTP mail server needs SSL security, like Gmail does, you'll need a couple files known as DLLs to make sure it works. Look in the Easy Email readme file for a link to those DLL files. You can download them and put them in your Windows system directory. Now all of your Yahoo email should be forwarded to your Gmail account. You can open the Mail Settings again and press the “Check for New Mail Test Settings button”; just to make sure it works. The thing is, this didn't work for me, though it did work for a lot of other people. Hopefully one of these methods is going to help you Karen and everybody else out there. I’m Tom Merritt, Cnet.com.