AOL IMAP settings
Read and send AOL email with other email applications - AOL Help
Just set your AOL account up within an e-mail client on your PC, and the mails will copy to the PC through IMAP. You can then move them to a local storage folder if you wish
Forget all this rubbish about the "personal filing cabinets"......
Note that where in the instructions it mentions imap.aol.com and smtp.aol.com, most AOL accounts can also use imap.aim.com and smtp.aim.com as fallbacks