Moving to Groups.io
(without the Easy Yahoo Group Transfer mechanism)

The Easy Yahoo Group Transfer mechanism was a service available only to groups on the Premium Yearly plan. Due to Yahoo's imminent removal of all Yahoo Group online member content (Conversations, Files, Photos, etc.), now scheduled for Dec 14th, the transfer service has been discontinued.

This page discusses methods for moving any archived group content you have, whether from a Yahoo Group or other list/group service, into a Groups.io group.

FAQ

Is groups.io free?

Yes. It is free for members, and it is free for a group on the Basic plan. Groups.io runs on a Freemium pricing model. You may upgrade your group to a paid Premium or Enterprise plan if you want or need more features and/or more storage. See the pricing and features to decide for yourself.

Where can I find out about starting my group and setting it up?

The necessary first step to moving a group or email list to Groups.io is to set up a group here. Here's a quick guide:
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Quick-Start-for-Group-Formation

Where can I find instructions for joining a group?

You can join one or more existing groups to get a feel for how they operate:
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Joining-a-group

Note: groups are highly configurable to suit the needs of their community. Don't assume that any one group, or even a small collection of groups, will be representative of all the ways a Groups.io group may be configured.

How do I save my Yahoo Group content?

Time is running out to copy Messages, Files, Photos, and other user content from Yahoo Groups. They are scheduled for removal on December 14th.

Yahoo has issued a last call for download requests of December 14th at 11:59pm PST (2019-12-15 07:59 UTC). Read a copy of the notice on Y!GMF. The strength of this method is that it retrieves a full copy of your groups' messages, in mbox format, which can be opened and uploaded or imported later. A weakness of this method is that it doesn't seem to reliably include all of any other type of content (Files, Photos, Attachments, Links, Databases). It does not include the groups' Members list nor its Calendar entries.

Another option is to use PG Offline, a third-party utility to download a copy of your Yahoo Groups' contents. $25 for unlimited downloads, limited free trial. A strength of this method is that it is usually able to download a full copy of each groups' content. A weakness of this method is that if you are not at least a moderator of the group the message archive does not have sending member email addresses and it does not include the group's Members list. It does not include the groups' Database nor its Calendar entries.

Using both methods and sorting it out later may be the safest approach.

Another option is to manually download content. This seems to be the only method for Calendar events. Tedious, and not much time left.

How do I move my Group to Groups.io?

Note: there is only a short time left before YG's message archive is deleted by Yahoo. 

This page is about manual transfers.

Moving members:

Saving your member list may be particularly important to you.

• On the Basic plan (free) you can upload a list of members to the Invite page. Similar to a Yahoo Group, it sends an invitation to each email address and the invitee must receive and respond to the invitation before they are added to the Members list.

Details: https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Inviting-new-members

• You can Upgrade your group to the Premium for one month plan ($20 USD) in order to upload a list of members (Direct Add). However everything else would need to be copied manually.

Details :Direct Add members

• To obtain a list of your Yahoo Group members you can go to the Manage Members page and in the Actions menu Export (download) a csv or tsv format file. It is best to open the file in a spreadsheet like Excel, then you can easily copy the Email column to paste into the Direct Add or Invite page. Note: this is only for groups with 1000 or fewer members, due to Yahoo's Export restriction.
  
  
• Send a message to your YahooGroups members on YahooGroups inviting them to join your new home. Include the URL. Or tell them to send a blank email to the Subscribe email address found at the bottom of your group's home page (that is, [GROUPNAME]+subscribe@groups.io  substituting the real group name for GROUPNAME). Since you won't be using a G.io invitation, you may have trouble tracking members who don't respond. 
  
  

Moving message archive, photos, etc.:

There are two parts to this - downloading content from your old group and uploading to your new group in Groups.io

Downloading:

There is only a short window at this point for downloading from Yahoo. A matter of days.

You can obtain your Yahoo Group's messages in mbox format by requesting a download from Yahoo's getmydata function. To do this you must sign in to Yahoo as at least a member of the group in question. Yahoo will ask you to re-confirm your sign-in credentials each time you visit this page (first to request the download, then to download it when ready): https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/getmydata You will be given a link to one or more zip files to download, the mbox files for your group's messages will be nested within (one of) those zip files. You must request the download before December 14 in order for your request to be honored.

How to download content from Yahoo - see https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/19430 

Here's an overview:

https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/25789

More:

- Lena has a way to get the messages into the archive, https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/22251 

Free. This works from a getmydata download from Yahoo, not from a PG Offline download. The download is in mbox format.

- PG Offline does download attachments (along with messages), at least when the Yahoo Group elected to store them on site.

We read that PGO-2-GIO will post the messages with their attachments attached. PGO-2-GIO doesn't work from a getmydata download.  PG Offline is a Windows program. (You could set up a Windows emulator on your Apple computer.)

For more information, search the messages of GMF.

- use Chrome app

(http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/93006447/Chrome%20Application%20To%20Download%20Messages). I have personally used this add-on to capture messages, and it does work, when Yahoo itself isn't acting up. 

- An option is simply to print the collection of old messages to a PDF file; at which point you can upload that to the files area of your group. That will give you something, even if it isn't conveniently indexed and searchable.

- Archive Team is backing up the entire Yahoo Groups on https://tracker.archiveteam.org/yahoogroups/ This group has a few thousand computers activated as a massive effort to retrieve and archive all of YG.  No matter how big or small the group may be.  As for private groups, they do 1 of 2 things, 1) request membership and then archive or 2)  ask from their site for owners and mods to send an invite to the group.  See https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Current_Projects

However in Ars Technica, it is reported that Yahoo stopped their backup. (Dec 9, 2019)

Photos and files

You'd need to move them manually. It can be time consuming and "ownership" of all the items will be in your name.  If the person that originally uploaded a picture is on the new group, you can manually assign ownership to them (if you know who it was.)  

There's currently not a similar function for Files.

Uploading: moving messages to Groups.io in mbox format:

The problem is what to do with the message archive once downloaded; as there is really no good way to re-upload it to groups.io, to re-link individual messages to their owners, or to provide online message search capability.  

It's not the same as a transfer and loses "ownership", but it is possible the Groups.io may be able to move MBOX files in.

If you can obtain the group's messages in mbox format, Groups.io can import them into your Groups.io group. For this, you must pre-pay for a year of premium service for your Groups.io group. Contact support if/when you're ready to go ahead with that. Note that the mbox import includes only the group's messages, you will still need to copy the group's members list, photos, files, and other content by alternate means (see above).

Caveat:

Neither Lena's way nor PGO are capable of getting the messages' From and Date info set to the original From and Date.

The unfortunate thing is that the getmydata downloads often miss the groups' photos and attachments entirely, and the mbox files it delivers only have placeholders for them.

Mark (Groups.io) uses mbox files too. But neither Lena's nor Mark's mechanisms would have attachments to go with the messages. Unless Yahoo has fixed their downloads since I last received one.

mbox files from other sources (like Mailman lists) might be another story.