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

Notes for Rootsweb users:

There is a general group for those that are moving from Rootsweb to share information: Gen-Listowners

There's a group that Rootsweb owners can check that shows the names of the replacements of the RootsWeb mailing lists and a little bit of information about them: Rootsweb-Announce

There is another group that's specifically related to Rootsweb groups in England and Wales: GGOEW

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The Easy Yahoo Group Transfer mechanism was a service available only to groups on the Premium Yearly plan. Due to Yahoo's removal of all Yahoo Group online member content (Conversations, Files, Photos, etc.) as of 16DEC2019, the transfer service has been discontinued.

The capability to download your group content via the Yahoo Privacy Dashboard has also been discontinued (it ended in early February, 2020).

This page discusses methods for moving any archived group content you already 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 from GMF moderators and users:
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Quick-Start-for-Group-Formation

The official Help:
https://groups.io/helpcenter/gettingstarted

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.

From Yahoo! Groups

How do I download my Yahoo Group's Members list?

If your group has 1000 or fewer 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.

If your group has more than 1000 members:

Use PG Offline ($25 USD) or the chrome application for downloading members (free). PGO produces a CSV format file, the file produced by the Chrome app is tab-delimited. As of December 16, both of these options still work, but you must be a Moderator of the Y!G to get the email addresses. 

While described as a "Chrome" application, it runs in at least one other web browser similarly based on Chromium, Vivaldi. Therefore it should work in Chromium, Opera, Chrome and others.

The application can be found at http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/79909487/Chrome Application to Download Members

Once loaded, in Vivaldi place vivaldi://apps in the address bar/field to reveal the page with its button.

Follow directions. The app generates a .txt file, which is actually tab-delimited (TSV).

Start your spreadsheet program, open/import it as tab-delimited file. Save in the spreadsheet format you desire.

Copy the column with the addresses to use in the Group.io Invitation or Direct Add process, and paste them into the box.

How do I save my Yahoo Group content?

Time ran out to copy Messages, Files, Photos, and other user content from Yahoo Groups. They were scheduled for removal from web access on December 14, 11:59 pm PT (2019-12-15 07:59 UTC) — actual removal occurred on December 16.

This affects manual copying as well as tools like PG Offline and the Chrome browser application for messages (but not the one for members).

Manual and third-party tools

As of December 16, the Chrome application for downloading messages no longer works, nor can you access any of this group content manually. 

As of December 16, the PG Offline software no longer works either, with the exception of acquiring your member list as mentioned above. You can, of course, still use it to manipulate/view group information that you downloaded before then.

Yahoo Download Requests

Th getmydata download capability is no longer available. It ended in early February, 2020.

Archive Team

An organization known as 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)

Uploading to Groups.io - DIY

Uploading member lists (email addresses)

Saving your member list may be particularly important to you.

Option 1:  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

Option 2: Upgrade your group to the Premium for one month plan ($20 USD) and use Direct Add to add them. Details: https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Direct-Add-Members

Option 3: Send a message to your members of the Yahoo Group suggesting that they join your new home on their own. Include the URL to the home page, or tell them to send a blank email to the Subscribe email address found near the bottom of your group's homepage (that is, [GROUPNAME]+subscribe@groups.io  substituting the real group name for GROUPNAME). Note that those on "No Email" may have to be sent a private message (i.e.: outside of Y!G).

Since you won't be issuing any G.io invitations, you may have trouble tracking members who don't respond. 

Uploading a message archive

Important note:  All methods except the Upload Service from GIO will be rate limited to ~40 messages per 30 minutes, a site constraint.

Here's an overview:

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

Option 1:  Lena has a Perl script to get the messages into the archive, details at https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/22251 

This option is free. It works from an mbox file (e.g. a getmydata download from Yahoo), or from the messages obtained by using the yahoopedia download script. It will not work from a PG Offline download.

The script has mechanisms intended to post messages as if From the original sender, even if a change of email address is involved. The script cannot get the date to match the original posting date, but does include that information in the message body. You can search for followups and tips by looking for mbox upload and #ioimportpl in the message archive.

Option 2:  PGO-2-GIO. This requires a PG Offline download. It costs $50 + $1 per 1000 messages uploaded with the first 10,000 messages free. There is no extra charge for multiple groups.

See http://www.personalgroupware.com/groups-io-migrate.htm to download the software product and be sure to carefully read the instructions.

Option 3: Print to a file and upload it. Once you get an download of some kind, simply print the collection of old messages to a PDF file or some other format; 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.

If all you want to do is to see the messages on your computer, you can open mbox files this way:

On a Mac, use Apple Mail to import the mbox file. It will create a new mailbox for each mbox file. 

On Windows, use the free Thunderbird app importexporttools to import the mbox file to the Thunderbird email client. (Thunderbird Mac doesn't seem to have this import option.)

Rumor has it that the email clients Eudora and Outlook are also capable of importing mboxrd files.

Photos, files and other content

PGO-2-GIO will upload your files and photos for you. Again, see http://www.personalgroupware.com/groups-io-migrate.htm .

If you don't have a PGO download, you will need to upload this content manually. It can be time consuming and "ownership" of all the items will be in your name.  

If the person that originally uploaded a Photo or created an Album is on the new group, you can manually reassign ownership to them (if you know who it was).  There's currently no similar reassignment function for Files.

Upload Services

Caution: Appearance in this list does not represent an endorsement by GMF, its moderators or members, or for that matter by Groups.io.
Please use your own judgement in evaluating the likely performance and reliability of the services listed.

If you offer an uploading service, contact the GMF moderators to be added to this list.

Groups.io mbox import service

Price: $220 (pre-paid upgrade of the target group to the Premium Yearly plan)

Supports: mboxrd files, including those retrieved from Yahoo Groups's Get My Data function.

Contact: Groups.io support

Groups.io can import an mbox file for you; see https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/26468 for details. The advantage is that the messages will be imported with the original From and Date information intact. Note that an mbox file includes only messages, you will still need to upload any members list, photos, files, and other content by alternate means.

Note: the mbox file(s) delivered by Yahoo's Get My Data download do not include attachments.

Note: A PG Offline download is not compatible with the groups.io mbox import.