How do I go about extracting all the email addresses from a phpbb forum database - I prefer sending mass emails using a different service than the admin cp on the forum.
Run a SQL query: SELECT user_email FROM phpbb_users Code (markup): I recommend phpMyAdmin, because from there you can export data to a CSV file, too. (Comma Separated Value)
In phpMyAdmin you can simply select the database that contains your forums, click the SQL tab and then insert the query given by Martindale. Alternatively you can click on the table named phpbb_users and select the "Export" tab, then export the user data as an Excel document.