How to download already read emails from Comcast webmail?

[Evander]

Someone asked me to help them with this. I should note that I haven't yet looked at Comcast's webmail interface (I'm not a CC customer) so I don't know exactly what is possible to do from within it. I'm going through some ideas before actually looking at their system

- My first thought was maybe I could do a "select all" from CC webmail and forward them to a newly created email address, such as gmail, and then download them all locally with Thunderbird. I do have a Yahoo! webmail account and noticed I can check 1 email message to forward but if I check more than 1 box the 'forward' button is greyed out - don't know if Comcast is the same way. Another potential downside is if there are a lot of emails and CC webmail only displays say 60 max at a time, it would be annoying and time consuming to forward all these messages

- Did a bit of searching on this already. One person suggested creating a new folder in CC webmail, move all existing messages into that folder, and then move them all back to inbox and then the email client would mass download them automatically. Don't know if that actually works or not

- Got anything better? I suppose it doesn't really matter if they get archived into an email client or not - just archived somehow so this person can dump Comcast and not lose all their emails

 

[lxskllr]

You're overthinking it. Just use Tbird to download from the server, and delete if desired.

 

[Evander]

It's likely Tbird would only download new unread messages from Comcast. Otherwise this person wouldn't be asking for my help

 

[lxskllr]

It's likely Tbird would only download new unread messages from Comcast. Otherwise this person wouldn't be asking for my help

It'll download the whole database, read and unread. AFAIK, you can't discriminate between them using POP, but that'll get all the messages, and they can be dealt with on the home computer.

 

[Mushkins]

It'll download the whole database, read and unread. AFAIK, you can't discriminate between them using POP, but that'll get all the messages, and they can be dealt with on the home computer.

POP will download anything on the server without discriminating, but it will all be marked as new/unread. As far as I know, POP doesnt have a read state flag like exchange does, its a pretty bare bones dumb delivery protocol. Whether it's read or unread is up to your email client at that point.

Since it's a webmail account, what's there is whats in the DB and you're not dealing with 30 day retention issues or anything like that. Just hook his comcast account up to any old email client and let it pull down the whole deal. Then you can export it to whatever.

 

[corkyg]

Email can also easily be FWD to another address.