How to Bid Adieu to Yahoo

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Q. How do I delete my Yahoo account on the web and move on to Outlook.com?

A. First, set up a new account on Outlook.com (Microsoft’s free webmail service) if you have not done so already. Next, switch over any social media, e-commerce or other online accounts that use your Yahoo mail address to your new Outlook.com email address.

Go through your Yahoo mailbox and forward any messages you want to keep to your new address. If you use a desktop mail program like Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Mail or Apple Mail, you can also add Yahoo as either a POP or IMAP mail account in the program’s settings to download the messages there so you have a copy on your computer.

If you want to take your contacts list with you, export your Yahoo address book. To do so, click the Contacts icon, select Actions and choose Export. Save the contacts as a .csv file that you can import later into Outlook.com.

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Yahoo gives you a long screen of information and warnings before you delete your account. Credit The New York Times
As an alternative approach, you may also be able to import all your Yahoo mail into your Outlook.com account. A page on the Microsoft Office site explains the process with illustrated instructions. The company has another online guide to linking contacts to your Microsoft account from other services, which may be helpful.

According to a recent report by the Associated Press, however, Yahoo’s automatic mail forwarding service was turned off earlier this month and a note in Yahoo’s help site says the feature is “temporarily disabled” because the long-standing setting is “under development.” (After the A.P. published its original story, Yahoo did tell the news service that it was working to get the feature restored as soon as possible, and did so a few days later.)

Once you have copied all the content you need from the Yahoo account, you can shut it down. While no straightforward link for deleting the account appears in your Yahoo settings, you can get there by logging in and going to https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete user. (To get there another way, open your Yahoo account settings, click the Help link, search for “delete Yahoo account” and select the “Terminating Your Yahoo Account” page listed in the results.)

Once you are on the Account Termination page, read through the information and enter your password as directed to close the account. However, be warned that if you have a Flickr photo-sharing account or use other Yahoo-owned services, your content on those sites will also be deleted — so you may want first to download the files you want to keep from those sites. Once you terminate, Yahoo says, it takes 90 days to fully remove your account from its site.