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Move your email from Yahoo Mail to FranklyMail

Yahoo publishes a separate server just for bulk downloads — export.imap.mail.yahoo.com — and it is the one to use for a migration. You will need an app password, which Yahoo requires whether or not you use two-step verification.

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Which password Yahoo Mail wants

An app password. Yahoo blocks plain-password access from mail apps by default, so this is needed even if you have not turned on two-step verification — which is the opposite of how most providers behave and the reason people assume their password is simply wrong.

Getting it, step by step.

Written against Yahoo Mail's current screens — the words in quotes are the words on the buttons.

If you would rather skip the menus: https://login.yahoo.com/myaccount/security opens the right screen directly, in whatever language your account is set to.

  1. 1

    Sign in to your Yahoo Account Security page at login.yahoo.com/myaccount/security.

  2. 2

    Under "External connections", click "Create app password".

  3. 3

    Type a name for the app in the text field, then click "Generate password".

  4. 4

    Copy the password and click "Done".

    It is shown once.

  5. 5

    In the import form use export.imap.mail.yahoo.com, port 993, your full Yahoo address, and that password.

    Yahoo documents this host specifically for pulling a whole mailbox into another app. The everyday host, imap.mail.yahoo.com, also works — the export one is simply what Yahoo points at this job.

What to put in the import form.

In the FranklyMail panel, open Mailboxes and find "Bring your old mail across".

export.imap.mail.yahoo.com
IMAP server
export.imap.mail.yahoo.com
Port
993 — TLS from the first byte.
Username
Your full address at Yahoo Mail, not just the part before the @.
Password
An app password, from the steps above.

For the technically curious: on 24 August 2026 this server answered AUTH=PLAIN, AUTH=XOAUTH2, AUTH=OAUTHBEARER to a CAPABILITY command on port 993. That is what it accepts on the wire; which password it accepts from you is the separate question the section above answers.

What goes wrong with Yahoo Mail.

  • Yahoo decides whether you are allowed to create an app password based on the browser you are using. Their instruction is to use a browser you have signed in with on several days, and not a private window — and they state plainly that customer care cannot override this. If the button does nothing, that is usually the reason.
  • Yahoo documents trouble downloading folders holding more than about 100,000 messages, and suggests splitting them into smaller folders first. If one giant folder is failing while the rest arrive, this is it.
  • App passwords survive a change of your main Yahoo password, unlike Apple’s. Convenient, but it also means an old one keeps working until you delete it.
  • Yahoo warns that a very large account can take days to download. That is the protocol and their rate limiting, not either provider.

Then the part that is the same for everyone.

Getting the password is the only step that differs by provider. The order of the move, what does and does not come across, and the one decision that stops you ending up with two copies of every message are on the main migration page.

How the move works

Moving from somewhere else?

$9/yr, and your archive comes with you.

Unlimited mailboxes and aliases on your own domain, 10 GB pooled across the account, 30 days to change your mind.

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