Need help managing that Preview Pane?

February 5th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

I think that this new format STINKS. I have been struggling to learn the computer and now I can’t figure out how to forward. It was so simple before, why make things complicated????

February 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm

The size of the pane is the least of my concerns.

The panel doesn’t even load half the time, which is why I switched back to Classic after trying Beta a couple of times.

February 5th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Despite all the buggy-ness of the new mail, you guys insist on pushing it, while seeming to ignore most of the complaints and issues brought up by many of the respondants the past month or so. The new mail as well as the new home page suck!!!

After over a decade of using yahoo as my base, I am becoming more and more disenchanted current situations.

And now Microsoft is offering billions to join forces. From a frying pan right into the fire! If that should come about it will definitely be “good-bye yahoo” for me.

February 5th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

Isn’t keeping the preview pane open leaving you vulnerable to viruses that load upon opening the email? I know my IT guys at work advise us not to keep it open in case we preview an unfriendly email. I know you’re working hard on spam prevention but a good deal of it still gets through to my Inbox.

February 5th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Oh, btw, sorry to see the cranky Ryan face back in your signature 8( How can I look at the news in the blog and feel good about it when you’re so cranky??

February 5th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

The preview pane is great. It was very buggy in IE, so I now use Firefox.
What will happen to Yahoo Mail when you merge with Microsoft and Hotmail?

February 6th, 2008 at 12:11 am

I like the new Yahoo Mail, I have been using it since it was in Beta, Only downside besides the occasional crash or weird error, Is the SMS feature still does not work on my primary account. But oh well with Microsoft taking over soon it wont matter.

February 6th, 2008 at 2:42 am

what about the fact that the new mail takes a lot of time to load?

February 6th, 2008 at 3:12 am

My email alert has not worked correctly since adding the new mail alert. I get incorrect totals of new mail waiting ,alert adds one or two more than I actually have. Requests for help have not helped. Not actually addressing the problem I specifically mentioned.

February 6th, 2008 at 5:30 am

The size of the pane is not the problem … it’s the tiny, teeny size of the print that is the problem. PLEASE fix that!!

February 6th, 2008 at 7:02 am

I’m very happy with Yahoo compared to other free services on the planet, but this morning I ended up here because when I click “delete” I’m asked again for my password. I added the requested color and an identifiable photo (my ballerina granddaughter - nice touch) but now I’m still getting asked for my password when I try to delete - and it won’t delete!

February 6th, 2008 at 7:30 am

An earlier comment by “melonkali” mentions a concern that I also have about using the Preview Pane. The concern is that a malware program (i.e. virus) could load onto a user’s computer when a message automatically opens in the Preview Pane.

Right after I switched to Mail Beta I contacted Customer Care to inquire about this concern. I had worded my inquiry in the format of a question seeking confirmation as to whether there is real cause for concern about such a risk with using the Preview Pane. The response I received did not address the validity of the concern; I only received instructions on how to turn the Preview Pane off.

Ryan, I feel the response I received from Customer Care was coy. I would appreciate it if you would research this issue and provide a clear and accurate answer as to whether there is a real potential risk with using the Preview Pane. Of course I realize the uncomfortable position this places Yahoo! in if the company is aware that the feature poses a potential risk. If there is a risk, the question then becomes one of whether or not Yahoo! cares enough about its customers and its reputation to honestly acknowledge the risk so customers have all the information they need to protect themselves.

I have not used the Preview Pane at all, and I will not use the Preview Pane unless Yahoo! provides confirmation that it can be used with no added risk to users’ computers. I am a paying customer for more than one Yahoo! service; yet, paying customers or not, all Yahoo! users deserve to have a safe experience when using the Yahoo! Network. Together we are all responsible for the billions of dollars in revenue that Yahoo! makes from on-line advertising every year. And for that reason alone Yahoo! should be eager to verify that the Mail features are safe to use.

February 6th, 2008 at 8:14 am

Should I be mad? I’ve patiently been awaiting yahoo’s new mail exiting beta– not saying a word till now: Will I continually be forced to go back to classic? After nearly a month, this gets old. Yahoo’s new mail will NOT load on IE7 for me; starts, but never does, utterly USE-LESS!
(Maybe I made mistake of getting hooked on your great calender features, which haven’t had clever access to either.)
Unless change however alternative is to move beyond considering abandoning yahoo mail. Should i join google’s Gmail? (So many friends tell me it’s better.)
Oh & also–I don’t want to switch to firefox so can work better! I cannot be the only one. BTW, is that the MS plan? Or are trying to get me to jump ship before any ms aquisition?

February 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am

I don’t know what everyone is complaining about. The new mail works awesome for me in both firefox and IE7. It loads quickly, is super easy to manage, and overall much more efficient than mail classic. I also love the new homepage with the organizer at the top. Being able to preview my mail, the weather, my calender, and sports scores just by resting my mouse over them rules!!!

Keep up the good work yahoo, and keep microsoft at bay!

February 6th, 2008 at 9:47 am

How can I get rid/turn off the pane that appears to the right of my emails and advertising something. I only want to read my emails, not be solicited. I want it off permanently, not just to hide it. Its annoying. If it can’t be turned off permanently, I want my old yahoo email back.

Thank you, Charles

February 6th, 2008 at 11:03 am

I agree with Aron. New Yahoo mail works just fine. Before I had problems with it and guess what? Norton Antivirus sucks and blocks the javascript. So now dudes read carefully what you have to do to be able to load yahoo mail.

1. Clear your browser cookies. Close your browser.
2. Disable both Norton Antivirus and Firewall.
3. Restart your browser and log into yahoo mail. Here you are

I got rid of Norton and Yahoo mail is loading fine, I love it. There are no problems on Linux either.

Love yahoo and hope you will stay independant. I hate MS, Google and investors who care about nothing but their pockets. Good luck!

February 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am

the issue is not the mail itself…but why can’t you click a “mailto” link and get the yahoo mail page to appear??? this used to work in IE6 and XP, even IE7 and XP, but NOOOO not in IE7 and Vista…How come??? (BTW i have tried all the tricks, and have found no way to get this to work…all i get is the windows mail pane, with no way to choose Yahoo Mail as the default)

thanks!!

February 6th, 2008 at 11:39 am

Hi everyone,
-
I’m asking around to get the most accurate response regarding security risks, but in the meantime keep in mind that when you open Mail the preview pane is empty. Only once you select a message does something appear. In addition, you can still delete messages without reading in the same manner you did on Classic … by checking the box in the left column and clicking the Delete button.
-
RyanK

February 6th, 2008 at 11:42 am

melonkali,
-
You aren’t the first person to express concern with the potentially “cranky” nature of my picture. I’m still kind of shocked, given I was just trying to make a silly face, but regardless … the people have spoken.
-
I’ve updated it with a fresh pic taken today. Hope you like it better.
-
RyanK

February 6th, 2008 at 11:43 am

I don’t know why for all the complaints! Yahoo! Mail works seemlessly for me. I am not a paying customer, jsyk. I love the way the “New” mail works on my IE7 and so forth. Beautifully!!

February 6th, 2008 at 11:44 am

Jason,
-
Like I said above, I’m checking on the security explanation. Also, I’m going to forward feedback about the Customer Care experience to the appropriate group.
-
RyanK

February 6th, 2008 at 11:57 am

byron123,
-
Have you tried the instructions from the Help page located at:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/settings/settings-10.html
-
RyanK

February 6th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

I have to say that I think Yahoo! is doing a great job with their new mail. I’ve been using Y! Mail for several years now and I just find it keeps getting better over time. For this reason, I’m hoping that the company can remain independent of Microsoft. The thought of MS taking over makes me cringe, considering the constant bugs and service packs they have to release for Windows. I can picture MS ruining what Y! has already done. I think if Y! had its own OS, I would be on board with it. I have faith that Y! could make it happen!

February 6th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

While I’m annoyed by the amount of spam that could be easily be catched by the antispam, I love the the New Yahoo Mail and have been using it since it was in beta for as long as I can remember. I would not like going back to classic for sure.

As for security, the reading pane will only load pictures from senders you trust, so there is no real vulnerability risk there. I don’t believe it loads javascript at all although I’m only speaking from memory.

February 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398381

How long is Yahoo gonna leave Firefox 3 users with a broken experience with the new Mail? All the Yahoo commentors says it’s fixed internally but until now still no rollout of the fix?

February 6th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

Since everyone else is piling on here, I figure here is as good as place as any.

I have noticed that recently I am getting more spam (correctly delivered to my spam folder) that have an incorrect delivery date (such as 1/18/2038 or 12/23/2029).

Because this folder is sorted by date, this stuff is always on top. Yes, just about everything in this is spam, but I need to review this folder from time to time. These days I having to scroll farther and farther down just to get to regular spam

It would be great of there was a rule to flat out toss out messages with inaccurate (especially far future) dates

February 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

I would like to see a quicker jump from my personal assistant to my mail. I have to go through the file tree to get to the new email. On sorting, why a pull down menu, why not the conventional click on the column header and sort?

February 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Who is saying Yahoo will be acquired by MS I would be black day for Web. Remember developments by MS :)…it took so many years to bring hotmail new features. Its mail, service still sucks. is MS is it will just focus

February 6th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

Please, PLEASE, how can I go back to the old screan/Yahoo. I hte this one….I don’t even know how I got it….it was an accident that’s for sure. I do not like change….I liked the old format, it was so easy for me.

If there is a way to go back please tell me how

February 6th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

How can I go back to the other format ?????

February 6th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

The switch BETA My Yahoo is horrible because when you switch your content gets rearranged all over the friggin place. Content that I removed years ago showed up and I had to deal with that? No way….the BETA sucks for sure.

February 7th, 2008 at 2:37 am

REMOVE THE PREVIEW PANE!

February 7th, 2008 at 6:05 am

Hello,

I am sick and tired of having to cancel the “new” home page, every morning when I turn on my computer. Each day I sign in, for two weeks, and go through the motions of getting my “old” home page back. The next day is the same of thing, new page, sign in again, although it says if I check the box, my sign in is good for two weeks. Ha! Ha! If this contiues I will go to Google, although I have been with Yahoo for 10 years. Quit shoving something new and improved down my throat, when the old page is better.

February 7th, 2008 at 6:28 am

How in the world do you compose a message?

February 7th, 2008 at 9:39 am

Many of my sent messages are being wrapped at a width of about ten characters. The formatting appears such that each word is on it’s own line, like this:
Hello,
I am
having
trouble
…
This is quite unprofessional and I know other users with the same problem.
How can we fix this?
-SJJh1

February 7th, 2008 at 10:48 am

I took the advice from another blogger on Yahoo mail blog and signed up for mail plus. I have posted many of my complaints in this forum about Yahoo mail and now it is time to post something positive. As I said I did sign up for mail plus and was very pleased with customer service. I just completed a live chat and they helped resolve the issue I had, there was a wait of about 5 minutes which is a very short wait for tech. help. If you are reading this I would recommend spending the 19.99 a year cost it is well worth it.

February 7th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

dear jeff watts, i too am on yahoo plus. where is the link to the chat support? many thanks, sjjh1

February 7th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

I’m clicking on all the commands and nothing happens. I can’t create “New”, “Forward”, “Delete”, etc. once I open an email. I also don’t want the preview pane, I’d like just the entire email to be shown on the screen. Can any of the above happen? Why can’t I move around in email anymore???

February 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

Why not fix Yahoo Mail so it will be compatible with Safari? After all, if you’re so worried about it being compatible w/ iPhone, let it work w/ Safari as well.

February 7th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

The new mail site is horrible. The only thing I can do is read my mail. I can’t do anything else. It wont even let me go back to the “classic look”. How do I get out of here!!!!

February 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

sjjh1,
-
Make sure that you are signed in and go to
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/
and click on the Contact Us tab. Mail Plus subscribers will have an option to chat with an agent.
-
RyanK

February 7th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

Personally, I love the preview pane though I admit it doesn’t always load. I like my homepage too.

On another note, even though I am running MS Vista and having mixed results - some very bad, some very good, some in between - I think it would be a big mistake to sell out to Microsoft. Everyone will suffer for it in the long run.

February 8th, 2008 at 10:48 am

I have no major issues with the new mail, except that some of the old Mail Plus features do not work.

My biggest complaint is that the new home page does not display my prefered format, and it keeps switching back to the new homepage, even though I have clicked to go back to my original.

February 8th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

To first commenter, Nelda ( http://ymailupdates.com/blog/2008/02/05/need-help-managing-that-preview-pane/#comment-25329 ) do you see the big “Forward” button between the Reply and Spam buttons? How do you have trouble forwarding?

For those people who have Yahoo Mail hang or start up too slow… Try toggling the Yahoo Mail Instant Messenger status to Offline (you are signed out of chat), rather than Available, Busy, Invisible. That way yahoo will not waste time starting up Instant Messenger. This status is located just to the right of the big Yahoo!Mail logo and your id, and above the buttons for Signout, My Account, Mail Classic.

I use the Preview Pane all the time. Most of my spam still goes nicely into the spam folder. I find it quicker to read mail than without the Pane.

Ryan, I am asking again, can we improve this comment area by allowing responses to be grouped beneath a particular comment? (Like the comment sections at rocketboom.com.)

February 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am

It appears Yahoo has been compromised or compromised itself. After much searching I found that Yahoo owns most of RightMedia who is placing the redirect at Yahoo login to ad.yieldmanager. I think this is unconsconsionable and is not part of the agreement we all signed with Yahoo to allow our info to ne used by Yahoo. Never had a problem until this year with Yahoo. but this is the limit. I dont want my Email redirected thru any site by anyone for any purpose

February 10th, 2008 at 7:06 am

I like having a preview pane, but the layout and usability of the current implementation leaves much to be desired. These days, many of the screens in use (e.g., laptop and desktop monitors) are widescreen. It would be a much more efficient use of screen space for the preview pane to be on the right or left of the inbox list, rather than below it. As currently implemented, I can’t view much of the inbox or the email being previewed. If the preview was on the right, I’d be able to see the full email as well as a much longer list of inbox items.

Microsoft Outlook and Entourage both implement capabilities to show a preview pane on the right of the inbox list. Why not do the same with Yahoo?

February 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am

I agree with Dave … the preview pane should be on the side, not the bottom. I hate my new wide-screen monitor (just not used to it yet), so maybe I would like it more if it actually had some purpose. Plus, the mail would be easier to read.
I’ve had NO problems with my Yahoo mail EVER, and I’ve been using it for 10 years. And, by upgrading to Mail Plus for a very reasonable $20 a year, I don’t get ads and my email home page is what I want it to be, and not what the totally free users get. Lovely.
As for possible viruses in the open preview pane … I’ve not had any problems with that. Maybe it’s my Norton cleaning things up, but any suspicious content goes straight into my spam folder.
One previous poster said to disable Norton and your firewalls … DO NOT do this or you are just asking for trouble.

March 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 am

Hi, I’ve been asking Yahoo since beta came about to have the option to shut off the dang confirmation boxes when deleting mail in the spam folder. Now there’s two! Classic mail just lets me delete them or empty the folder without being interrogated. Why do they need to make it more complicated. I know what I’m doing when I click on the “Delete” button. “Do you really want to delete those files?” “Are you sure?” Next they will have “I don’t believe you so I’m not going to delete them”. I have had Plus for over two years and everytime I try the new Yahoo mail I switch back.

March 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm

I agreed with Charles 100%. I also want to get rid/turn off the pane that appears to the right of my emails, and the advertising. I only want to read my emails, and I do not be solicited. I want it off permanently, and not just to hide it. Its very annoying. Please post something that will help me make the changes or encourage yahoo to do the changes.

Thank you

March 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm

I cant find any other place to ask this>>>
About 2 weeks ago aLLLLL of my that I had read but did Not delete, was gone
Is there a way to have it recovered.
I had depended on Yahoo to keep it for me
I had like 200 items as read but not erased
Now I need because it was my way of keeping a history of where I was and what I was doing as well as some very important imformation .. Please help

March 7th, 2008 at 6:27 am

I was very reluctant to use the new yahoo mail at first. I had been a classic user for years, and I didnt NEED all those features. Well, after using it for 3 months, I am sold. I tried going back to classic (to do something I couldnt do in beta) and I found if very cumbersome. So keep up the good work!

March 17th, 2008 at 2:35 am

I have been using the Beta, happily. Got a new laptop, loaded Firefox, no emails, IE7 no emails,just sitting loading, telling me to try classic, well, there it is a mess too.Have been playing with cookies and security issues but no luck. I am running AGV anti virus but always used it before as well.If I cant get it to work, I will migrate to something more friendly that works.
Why not implement a simple interface like Outlook?
Also, no help available on the website.No feedback about the problem either.

March 21st, 2008 at 4:26 am

Well Lately the inbox is taking ages to load and it is not loading.. I think it is a java error update when i updated my java lately .. .. yet it is not nice to rely on this email while u cannot open .. Gmail is much better and never let me down…

April 24th, 2008 at 3:20 am

mahshid078@yahoo.com

June 7th, 2008 at 11:48 am

mahshid078@yahoo.com

June 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am

I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THE OLD SCREEN OF YAHOOL MAIL BACK>> PLEASE>> I HATE THIS NEW ONE Peggy Jones