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YahooGroup Owners
What happening to Yahoo Groups?
The following features were permanently removed on December 16, 2019:
  • Files
  • Polls
  • Links
  • Photos
  • Folders
  • Calendar
  • Database
  • Attachments
  • Conversations
  • Email Updates
  • Message Digest
  • Message History

Although it is still possible to send out messages to other members, there are no longer any online archives at all and it is little more that an email redirection service. This has seriously reduced the usability of the groups as it is no longer possible to read the previous messages online. YahooGroups will be closing their services down completely on December 15. 2020.

So what does this mean for Yahoo Group Owners?
It is no longer possible to post new messages online, all posting has to be done via email - a major backstep in our opinion, making the platform even more uninviting. You have until December 15, 2020 to secure the data from your group to be able to migrate to another platform like forums.group

So what alternatives to Yahoo Groups are there, without losing your online archives?

  1. The most popular option was to move to groups.io. It is very similar to Yahoo Groups with a few extra functions and they even offered a migration service from YahooGroups to make it easy to migrate there. Unfortunately, they have stopped accepting transfer requests from Yahoo Groups after mitrating more that 3000 groups to their platform. Although migrating 3000+ groups is an impressive number, there are over 10 million YahooGroups meaning there are still a considerable number of groups that were unable to keep their archives. It is still possible to migrate your members to groups.io, but it is not possible to restore your message archives any more.

  2. Our sister website https://groups.rifeforum.com is offering Windows compatible downloads of 70 Health-Related Yahoo-Groups. If you are into health-related topics, this is an excellent source of the downloadable archives of a number of select groups for just a few dollars, each. Our tip is their packs that give you a range of groups at an even lower price.

  3. The third option is forums.group - our service. If you have a copy of the YahooGroup MBox archive files that they offered all members to download, we can setup and host a phpBB forum for you and insert your members and messages into the forum system. The messages are correctly attributed to the respective usernames and a forum is simply much more flexible than groups.io is. Another aspect is that we do not restrict the topics allowed to be discussed, like other social media platforms may do.

Migrating your archives and members can occur now, even though YahooGroups have gone offline, as long as you can supply us the official Yahoo Groups archives in MBox format, as we can use them as archives. Click here for more details and to apply for a transfer.
Note: You will have to backup your memberslist from YahooGroups before they shut down the service on December 15, 2020.

WARNING: If your group discusses the dangers of vaccinations, that is a forbidden topic on group.io. Our method is then the only option for your group to revive the online archives as we do not censor such discussions at all.
Can I find my Group's Archives at Archive.Org?
Archive.org has been archiving the messages of as many groups as possible. They also joined a lot of YahooGroups in order to obtain the MBox files from Yahoo before they stopped that service. Their work can be downloaded from https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_yahoogroups, although the formats used are not easy to use. We are investigating if we can use these archives to restore YahooGroups.


How about Facebook, Twitter, etc?
While it may be tempting to move to Facebook, Twitter, etc. with your group, they have been deleting thousands of alternative health and conservative groups on their platform and their censorship is only getting worse. It may be dangerous to run an alternative health or news group on that platform. If your group is about some camera or other non-critical item, then Facebook is still a viable platform. If you have a Facebook Group, it is possible to migrate to Forums.Group with your archives.

Using PC Software to View a Full Offline Archive
This method is more advanced and comprehensive and works with a Windows PC. A special Windows software program has been designed specifically for viewing Yahoo Groups for offline reading.

The free trial version is all you need to view and search the archived messages. That means that the users can simply download the group files from this website (when they are released) and import them into the free trial version of the software.

Our sister website https://groups.rifeforum.com has already archived all the messages, attachments, files, photos and links from 70 health-related Yahoo Groups as listed on their website. These archives are available for download now and include the Windows software, intructions, archive files and any Attachments, Files, Photos and Links that could be downloaded as well.


Moving your Active Community to a New Home at forums.group

As there is little point in keeping the discussions on Yahoo Groups, now the archives are gone, let us look at online options:

As groups.io are no longer migrating YahooGroups to their platform, there is now effectively only one service that can still revive your YahooGroup archive back into a full community with your past messages intact - forums.group - the website you are looking at right now.

We have now started to restore YahooGroups to our platform. We are admittedly late to the game, yet we believe to have an excellent sollution that is more flexible than any other service. We can convert your group into a full, powerful phpBB forum. This lets you sort your messages into catagories, making it much easier to find and contribute to past discussions. A YahooGroup was like a daily newspaper - it was always about the topic of the day and yesterday's topics were soon forgotten and lost in the archives. By sorting those messages into catagories, you can rediscover those past discussions and valuable information, better than ever before. That is what we are offering on this website - your own phpBB based forum for the continuation of your community.


In Summary:
  • For more details on the deletion of Yahoo Groups, see this official page: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/SLN31010.html
  • All Yahoogroups lost their archives on December 16, 2019. Email comunication is still possible, but the heart of such groups are their archives.
  • Other services like groups.io provided an excellent means of migrating your group, but that option is no longer available.
  • YahooGroups has now announced they will be completely clowsing down their service on December 15, 2020.
  • Forums.group is now the only service that can make use of your archive downloads to fully revive your community in full splendor.

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