It’s official…the beta is over! As is being reported on Yodel! the all-new Yahoo! Mail rollout has begun. Many of you have already been switched from the beta, but others may have to wait a week or so for the rollout to hit their respective servers. Below is the post that John Kremer, VP of Yahoo! Mail, published earlier this morning on the corporate blog.
If you are here for the first time, this is the Yahoo! Mail blog, the home for all things relating to Yahoo! Mail. Whether you are looking for news on feature changes, bug fixes, interviews with Yahoos working on Mail, tips from power users, tutorials, a glimpse behind the walls here at Yahoo!, or what have you, this is where you can go to find it. Subscribe to the RSS Feed, or even better you can add it to MyYahoo by clicking 
and you can see updates there!
Ryan K
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail
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Introducing the all-new Yahoo! Mail
My kids, like most, love text messaging. But while their nimble fingers can easily navigate cell phone keypads at lightening speeds, I definitely prefer a full keyboard, and am much more inclined to use email than text messaging.
So I’m doubly excited to announce the launch of the all-new Yahoo! Mail today. Not only are we launching a brand new version of one of the most popular Web mail services in the world, but we’re unveiling a solution to my texting woes, and giving people around the world more ways to connect. With the new Yahoo! Mail, people can send and receive free text messages in their email to and from any mobile phone number in participating markets including the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.
It’s sure to come in handy for people like me who want to keep in touch with text-crazy friends and family. From my Yahoo! Mail window (and using my comfortably full-sized keyboard), I can type a note to my son, letting him know I’m on my way to his soccer practice, and send it straight to his phone. And he can send a text message right back to my email, letting me know where to meet him. The intuitive, chat-like interface makes it super easy, even if you’re a novice at text messaging.
We already have great integrated instant messaging features in Yahoo! Mail, so adding text messaging was a natural next step. It’s an increasingly popular way to keep in touch, especially among younger users. In fact, 69% of US mobile phone users between the ages of 18-39 use text messaging (Harris Interactive, June 2006), and half of Americans age 18-25 say they sent or received a text message over the phone in the past day (Pew Research Center, January 2007).
Today’s news doesn’t stop at text messaging — the all-new Yahoo! Mail also lets users send and receive instant messages in real-time to their friends who are logged into Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, without ever leaving the e-mail experience. You can even switch between emailing, instant messaging, and text messaging as your friends come online or go mobile. We want our users to be able to choose how they communicate with their friends and family, in the most appropriate method for the moment. By adding these new types of real-time communication into Yahoo! Mail, we’re laying the foundation for an even more social experience for our users.
For those of you who love the original Yahoo! Mail interface — not to worry. We’re keeping Yahoo! Mail Classic as well. Our goal is to provide the best email experience for everyone, whether that be familiar and comfortable or new and shiny.
To check out the brand new Yahoo! Mail, go on over to http://mail.yahoo.com. Enjoy!
John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail
Why did the “CHECK MAIL” option disappear? I found it useful, and it seemed to always find mail that Inbox did not know about.
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new topic – the preview does not consistently download images, even tho my Internet connection seems fine.
Overall I like the old version much better – is there any way to go back?
Thanks
WHY DOESN’T THE EMAIL SCREEN SCROLL SMOOTHLY?
IT ALWAYS STOPS AND SAYS “LOADING MAIL.”
THE CLASSIC VERSION DID NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM.
CAN YOU FIX YAHOO MAIL SO THAT THE TYPE IS BIGGER? THE TYPE IS SO SMALL IT HURTS MY EYES WHEN I READ MY EMAIL FOR VERY LONG.
Does anyone know when/if Calendar will be ever updated to match the new Yahoo Mail?
[...] messaging (SMS) on my AJAX-y Yahoo! Mail. I’ve been waiting for this feature since it was announced. The “beta” sign also is gone. I find the new version so unresponsive and slow. Maybe [...]
Hi!
I have an idea on how to extremely fight spam! :)
I want Yahoo! to enable me to chose an option so that, e-mails with certain characteristics to receive a message stating that the user does not exist!
This will make spammers e-mail database useless, since there is no reasonable way to discriminate between removed account and valid, but protected accounts! :)
Please e-mail me on this matter! I realy want this type of protection!
This is so cool!
I tried Mail Beta in August, and I liked it. But one day in September I needed to use options but got a message that it was temporarily unavailable, so I just switched back to classic Yahoo! Mail. Now I want to switch to new Yahoo! Mail again but can’t do that. There is no message ”The new Yahoo! Mail has arrived! Try it now!” when I click “Options”. I suspect this problem relates to Russian interface that I use, but I don’t know how to switch to English interface.
I don’t have any such problems with Gmail, and there I can also whenever I like switch back and forth between English and Russian or any other language they support. I don’t understand why Yahoo! still has such problems. I think I’ll just use Gmail more often than Yahoo! Mail for now.
Hi.
I’ve had Plus Mail for quite a few years and it has always worked flawlessly. Now I can’t download anything! What is a secreddownload? It can’t be opened.
How can a company your size release such a major error? Is Yahoo going down the drain or what?
Please fix this so my email life can go on.
My Yahoo Mail Classic suddenly stopped loading with Mozilla under Mac OS 9. It looked like an CSS was stalled. The next day, it would load, but the “send” and “reply” buttons would not work. Today, it will not even load the page anymore.
Will Classic start working again like it used to?
I would like to know why yahoo e-mails are being routinely blocked from hotmail users. Within the last week I have had two e-mails returned with an apology from Yahoo because hotmail blocked them. These were legitimate messages that were replies to previous emails from the hotmail user. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect Microsoft of doing it on purpose………….I love Yahoo mail – it’s terrific, but having to resend an email from another account is a pain……
Cool.
Yahoo has GOT to fix this. Just for your info, all of my OLD old emails (which have attachments, whether Word, PDF. Indesign, Photoshop, or other, ) all download NOW with “securedownload”. I feel like I stepped into a whirlwind. I am NOT going to mess up my files, so Yahoo had better just take a good hard look at the amount of trouble they are causing for every Apple user (at least so it seems with the OS X 4.0) Who owns Yahoo, anyway ? I wonder if it was in any way accidental or ?
This new service was perfect. I used it for almost a long time. It makes me really productive.
The only reason I turned back to the old style was that I didn’t find a way to disable chat.
The problem is that chat loads automatically, I don’t notice, or someone else is using another tab of the browser and closes the window including my Yahoo tab, and I loose some messages, and as long as they don’t add to my archive, I can not see them later again.
If there was an option to disable it, I wouldn’t return back to old yahoo.
I got them Never-ending Yahoo Mail “Securedownload” Blues. On my Mac OX (10.4.10) using not only Safari but Opera as well. Both browsers are choking on whatever late-August tinkering Yahoo did to its webmail.
A minor annoyance for some, but for a small business like mine, run on a shoestring and totally dependent on very speedy handling of a dozen or so emails per day, this glitch has been nothing less than an ongoing trainwreck.
My workarounds such as they are have been laboriously renaming every attachment, Googling for clues to resolving this problem, and lots of grumbling.
Still the same problems with Yahoo email downloads. Mac OS X 4.0 and Safari. This is disgusting and irritating. I am NOT going to chance losing my mail and bookmarks. Yahoo has done something to interfacing with Safari. It needs fixing
I hate the new beta mail. I do not want to constantly “switch back”. I want my old mail back, without ANY chance of beta mail comimg up.
Please help!
I use Beta for a few days then switched back to Classic. Now my Yahoo mail is sooooo slooooooooow.
can anything be done to fix this?
hey- im just curious about interface options. Though not nearly as important as some of the other apparent issues people are having, i’d love to at least change the colors- even if it’s just a simple selection of say: blue, pink, purple, orange, black… or whatever. Like i said- not crazy important or necessary, but something that i seem to keep checking for in options.
Either way, YahooMail Beta is my favorite- my primary email account- and once i switched from Classic, i never looked back- & probably never will, even if it means forever looking at the same tired default interface. =^._.^= *cHRiStY*
what have you done to beta!!!! this is the same old stuff we had before, where are my on-line contacts, my RSS feeds, all the things I enjoyed about beta have been taken away and we’re back to the original format…didn’t we have any input about the change? the current set-up doesn’t do what I want…is this a plan to have us upgrade?
The Wall St. Journal of 08/30/07 had an article saying that the new Yahoo Mail allowed one to see the contents of an e-mail without opening it.
I haven’t found out the trick yet.
help! Does anyone know how?
Charlie
Since my first post with you yesterday, I now have 5 bulk mails on my email. What in the world have you done ! If I had any idea that you would provide my email address, I would not have made the comment about the “securedownload”. Please remove the FLASHING advertising from the screen since there are many people that will have severe medical problems because of the flashing !
Beta might be fine, if complicated, BUT PLEASE move the ADVERTISING from the right side of the screen up to the TOP OF THE SCREEN – as we had. I can’t work with that flashing in my eye.
For almost a week my Yahoo email downloads no longer state the filename+ending, but instead EVERY ONE says “securedownload” followed by 1,2,3,4,5 etc. I use an Apple OS 10 + and have never had any problems like this before. Files I previously downloaded prior to the glitch now bear the “securedownload”. Please repair this. I am NOT going to upgrade or risk losing my files. Apparently, from Google searching and Yahoo searching, this is a widespread problem. Thanks,
Andrew,
To quote John’s response on Yodel…
“…we hope to make the text messaging feature available in additional markets, but are uncertain of the timeframe because it is dependent on the extension of our relationships with mobile carriers/operators around the world. We’ll let you know as we know more.”
-Ryan
Hi R,
Good catch. That screenshot was prepared prior to the actual public release of the product. Prior to launch even the versions we were testing internally retained the BETA text in the logo. If you check now it is gone, and I’ve highlighted where people can find the SMS option.
Thanks!
Ryan
I’m experiencing repeating problems, especially last two days I’m not able to download (POP) the mail and often even to login.
I hope it all will be fixed really soon.
Ryan,
Do you know when Australia will have the sms function in Yahoo Mail?
Thanks
Ryan,
I hope you actually read my post.
Your post in your own blog http://ymailupdates.com/ has a screen shot that clearly shows
1. BETA
2. Drop down selected & shows a text message option.
What’s up, either clean up the image or get a real answer as to when this is going to be available.
Ryan,
Why did you limit the array of available fonts when the Beta was introduced? Are there plans to expand the font options or ways for users currently add them? Bring back the fonts!
It would also be nice to have the signature/no signature boxes available. Currently, one must go into ‘options’ to make the change each time (or select the signature text and delete it) … TOO cumbersome & time consuming!
How do I hide email addresses in a mass mailing? I have tried BCC and it still shows ALL addresses. I don’t want ALL of those addresses to be visible, just show one recipient.
Johan,
I saw the same thing with the typing notifications. Pure genius. I laugh out loud everytime one of them pops up. It’s not on every message, just every once in a while. However, if you could control it, then you lose the “ingredients” which makes it so clever: that it’s unpredictable and occasional. I think its better the way it is now.
Is it possible to use the apostrophe in the final version? It is really helpful for contractions and indicating dimensions in inches.
It is rather ANNOYING when you keep typing and the quick find is operating instead. Sort of hard to keep up standards of language when you don t have the full set of punctuation. DAMN. it happens in your form too. Is this a feature or a bug?
Johan,
I’ll see what I can find out about the typing notification.
Carey,
I’m not sure which emails you would have been getting. There is a pay version of Mail, but there are no plans to require all users to pay, beta or otherwise.
-RyanK
For a few years now, I have been receiving emails of which I have considered as spam that Yahoo Mail will be soon charging for the service to individuals and commercial concerns. Is this true when the beta is released to the general public?
Hello,
I just noticed something when using the IM chat in Yahoo! Mail Beta that is pretty awesome but I have no idea how it’s happening. Usually when your friend is typing you back it will say Joe Schmoe is typing…but now I’m seeing some other things down there, like “Joe Scmoe is in the zone, prepare yourself for an AHA moment…” that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in IM chats! I’m tired of all the smiley faces, but this is genius. So here is my question, can you change that manually, or is it only automated and if so, how does it work????
Thanks
/Johan