PG Offline is a message reader and downloader for Yahoo Groups. It allows you to download messages and attachments from Yahoo Groups, so you can read them at your leisure, without having to visit the Yahoo site. You can choose to download all the messages with their attachments, import or export a range of messages for a group as one file, sort by author, date, message number or subject. In addition, you can search for messages by author, subject or content even across multiple groups.
PG Offline allows you to download & then read Yahoo group messages offline.
You can sort, search, see statistics & read all this convenient info anytime you like without a connection to the internet (once you've downloaded your messages of course!).

* Download & archive all the messages from a Yahoo group.
* Import/Export all or a range of messages for group/s as one file.
* Hide posts prefixed with '>' so when you're reading a thread you only see new posts.
* Mark special messages as 'Favourite' so you can find them again easily.
* Sort by author, date, message number, subject, favourite or new status.
* Search messages by author, subject or content even over multiple groups!.
* Save and load search parameters. Save and load search results.
* View only new messages & read them in a digest format.
* See statistics for the group. See how many posts you've made, etc.
* Share attachments downloaded before the Yahoo cutoff.

Highlight the groups you want PG Offline to download & use the Add button to bring them over to the other side of the list. To add more than one group at a time hold down the shift key & click on the required groups. This list is all the groups you want to download. When finished use the OK button.
In the left hand panel (list of groups) highlight the group you want to download. On the menu bar the options Start, List, Settings, Stats, Search, and Hide >. will now be available.

The Group Logon tab will be filled by default with the details you've already given about your Yahoo username & password. If for some reason you have groups which use a different username & password, you can specify that here.
The Download Settings tab allows you to specify if you want to download attachments by ticking the Download Attachments checkbox. You can then give a minimum or maximum size of attachment to download and you can enter a file filter e.g. *.gif so it only downloads gif attachments. If you want to specify multiple file types, list them separated by a comma & blank space e.g. *.gif, *.bmp, *.jpg
It also lets you specify the message number you wish to start downloading from (defaults to 1 or last message downloaded) and the message number to stop at (defaulted to the last message in the list). This is in case the group has thousands of messages & you only want, say, the last 10,000. Please note that the trial version limits you to downloading 500 attachments.

Once you're happy with your Download Settings & are sitting comfortably then we can begin.
Click OK to return to the main screen. Now click Start. The messages will begin to download into the top right hand pane (the message window). If you select a message the text will appear in the botton right hand pane (the text window). You can use the 'Hide >' button to mask off lines prefixed with '>'. Click this button again to bring back the hidden lines.
To stop your download you can hit the Stop button. If you wish to restart your download hit the Start button & the software will restart from where it left off. In order to load the latest messages for all your groups choose
Messages --> Refresh All Groups

Downloading messages from Yahoo can be a long task.
You can import all the messages for a group (or groups) as one archive file, assuming you know someone who has already downloaded the group's messages & has created an archive file via the Export feature.
In order to create an archive file of a very big group, it can be usefull to club together with other group members to split the download. If your group has 40000 messages, 20 of you could download it easily by splitting the download amongst yourselves and emailing each other the parts you've downloaded.
Warning... some of these files are big. As a rule of thumb, each 1000 messages on a group translates to 1Mb of zipped archive file. You can see then that a group with 20,000 messages will require a file about 20Mb in size!
If you have received multiple archive files, unzip these files into *different* folders. This is very important as the unzipped files may have the same name (ygrpack.mdb) and will overwrite each other if unzipped to the same folder. (n.b. versions before 2.0.171 do not recognise archive names other than 'ygrpack.mdb'.)
Alternatively, unzip the files & import them one at a time. Then it doesn't matter that the previous archive is overwritten. Split archives of groups can be imported in any order.

Now enter the location of the unzipped archive file into the Source Database Path.
Click the 'Get List' button.
You should now see the name of the group in the 'Select groups to import' window. Select the group (by ticking the checkbox next to it) & click on Import. You may select multiple groups by ticking their checkboxes. Note that in the example below multiple groups have been exported to one archive file. Normally, to keep the file size down, only one group would be in an archive file. Especially groups with attachments.
Before you attempt to import a group, ensure that you are a member of that group & that it is in your group list!
Otherwise the group in the list will be greyed out & you will not be able to select it.

The license of this software is Free Trial Software, the price is $24.95, you can free download and get a free trial.