 |
PG Offline allows you to download & then read Yahoo group messages offline.
You can sort, search, see statistics & read all this handy info anytime you like
without a connection to the internet (once you've downloaded your messages of course!).
If you want to try it, you can download the program from here
download
Master Login
Once installed, upon startup you will be asked for your Yahoo username & password.
Set up your Groups List
Once you've entered these you need to use Groups-> Get Group List.
This will list all of your
Yahoo groups.
Highlight the groups you want PG Offline to download & use the Add button to
bring them over to the other side of the list. To add more than one group at a
time hold down the shift key & click on the required groups. This list is all the groups you want to download.
When finished use the OK button.
Now you're ready to download.
Downloading Yahoo Groups messages
In the left hand panel (list of groups) highlight the group you want to download.
On the menu bar the options Start, List, Settings, Stats, Search, and Hide >. will
now be available.
Choose Settings.
You can now choose from 2 tabs.. Group Logon or Download Settings.
The Group Logon tab will be filled by default with the details you've already
given about your Yahoo username & password. If for some reason you have
groups which use a different username & password, you can specify that here.
The Download Settings tab allows you to specify if you want to download
attachments by ticking the Download Attachments checkbox. You can then give a
minimum or maximum size of attachment to download and you can enter a file filter
e.g. *.gif so it only downloads gif attachments.
If you want to specify multiple file types, list them separated by a comma & blank space
e.g. *.gif, *.bmp, *.jpg
It also lets you specify the message number you
wish to start downloading from (defaults to 1 or last message downloaded)
and the message number to stop at (defaulted to the last message in the
list). This is in case the group has thousands of messages & you
only want, say, the last 10,000. Please note that the trial version limits you to downloading 500 attachments.
Once you're happy with your Download Settings & are sitting comfortably then
we can begin.
Click OK to return to the main screen. Now click Start. The
messages will begin to download into the top right hand pane (the message window). If you select
a message the text will appear in the botton right hand pane (the text window). You can use
the 'Hide >' button to mask off lines prefixed with '>'. Click this button
again to bring back the hidden lines.
To stop your download you can hit the Stop button. If you wish
to restart your download hit the Start button & the program will restart
from where it left off. In order to load the latest messages for all your groups choose
Messages --> Refresh All Groups
Importing Archive Files
Downloading messages from Yahoo can be a long task.
You can import all the messages for a group (or groups) as one archive file,
assuming you know someone who has already downloaded the group's messages & has
created an archive file via the Export feature.
In order to create an archive file of a very big group, it can be usefull to club together
with other group members to split the download. If your group has 40000 messages, 20 of you
could download it easily by splitting the download amongst yourselves and emailing each other
the parts you've downloaded.
Warning... some of these files are big. As a rule of thumb, each 1000 messages on a group
translates to 1Mb of zipped archive file. You can see then that a group with 20,000 messages
will require a file about 20Mb in size!
If you have received multiple archive files, unzip these files into *different* folders.
This is very important as the unzipped files may have the same name (ygrpack.mdb) and will
overwrite each other if unzipped to the same folder.
(n.b. versions before 2.0.171 do not recognise archive names other than 'ygrpack.mdb'.)
Alternatively, unzip the files & import them one at a time. Then it doesn't matter that the previous archive is overwritten.
Split archives of groups can be imported in any order.
Now choose File --> Import From Folder
Now enter the location of the unzipped archive file into the Source Database Path.
Click the 'Get List' button.
You should now see the name of the group in the 'Select groups to import' window.
Select the group (by ticking the checkbox next to it) & click on Import.
You may select multiple groups by ticking their checkboxes.
Note that in the example below multiple groups have been exported to one archive file.
Normally, to keep the file size down, only one group would be in an archive file.
Especially groups with attachments.
Before you attempt to import a group,
ensure that you are a member of that group & that it is in your group list!
Otherwise the group in the list will be greyed out & you will not be able to select it.
If you double click on the currently selected group you will get a pop-up which will allow you to choose
a range of messages to import if you do not wish to import the whole archive.
Usability queries can be directed to 
|
