Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

Did you know that you can retrieve all messages FROM a single user with only one click? Longtime readers of this blog already know that the All-New Yahoo! Mail features a very powerful and easy to use Search option that makes it very easy to filter your results by a wide variety of criteria (folder, date, sender, etc.). If you haven’t seen the previous posts with tutorials and screencasts, or if you simply love revisiting my earlier work, you should really check them out.

Anyway, we know that often times people will be reading a message from another user, and realize that you need to track down something from an earlier email with that same person.

Maybe they have selectively forgotten an embarrassing admission. Or maybe you are certain that they included directions in a previous email but you are having trouble tracking down which message. Really, it could be any reason, but we all have times where this comes up.

Of course you can head up to the Search box and type in the user’s name, but that requires typing and accuracy. Instead you can simply click on the user’s name in the message header (name or email address) and a Search runs for all messages from that user. That’s right … only one click needed!

Apologies to the Classic users, but this feature is only part of All-New Mail.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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The response to the Desktop Shortcut tip from last week was so positive, I thought it would be a good idea to share the details on the toolbar tip I described as my personal favorite. Just like the desktop solution, this should work for users on windows or Mac, and on just about any browser option for either.

Just about everyone should be familiar with the idea of adding a page to a Favorites or Bookmarks list. Something that many people may not be aware of (except, of course, for Tint and Mark who also suggested this within Comments) is that you can have a customizable toolbar near the top of your browser with quick access to your favorite sites.

Depending on your browser you may have to enable (or reveal) the Toolbar option. To do this you’ll need to access the View menu for your browser and navigate into the Toolbars area (it’s usually at the top). Then mouse over and make sure that the Links or Bookmarks option is enabled (or checked). After doing this you should see a new toolbar in your browser. Each browser usually comes with a few pre-selected sites, but those can be easily deleted.

Now that you have your toolbar available, you can start populating it with buttons to your favorite Yahoo! sites. You can add other sites as well, but really … why would you need to?

Just like when you added the shortcut to your desktop, you will want to mouse up the the Y! icon in your browser’s address bar. Simply click and drag it to the toolbar and that’s it.

Depending on which browser you are using, you may want to rename the link to something shorter, or more recognizable (I usually make mine “Y!Mail” to maximize space) … but that is entirely up to you.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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I saw this tip on the UK blog, and at first thought that Andrew must be out of his head … but I checked with folks from this side of the pond and found that this behavior isn’t all that unusual.

It turns out that a decent portion of users don’t actually bookmark Yahoo! Mail, but instead carry out a few simple steps every time they want to login.

Open a Browser > Search for Yahoo! Mail > Click on Yahoo! Mail in the Search results > Login

This sounds like a lot of work (which is why I use the bookmarks toolbar in all of my browsers), and there are several easier ways. Andrew’s suggestion for his ‘mum’ (as well as for the UK blog readers) was to create a desktop icon to launch Yahoo! Mail. All you need to do is get to the Yahoo! Mail sign-in page any way you prefer. Once there don’t sign-in just yet. Then mouse up to the browser’s address bar (the part with the http:// stuff) and drag the little Y! icon from your browser to your desktop.

Depending on which browser you have, as well as whether you are on a Mac or PC, you’ll get a little shortcut graphic representing your browser. On the left you will see an example of Firefox on Windows XP.

You can also see that the name of the shortcut is based on the name of the page it is pointing to (apologies to Mac users who will have to settle for the URL). You can rename it with a good ol’ slow double click, and have it say whatever you like.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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As a Yahoo! Mail user you’re probably vaguely aware that Yahoo! does other stuff too. Lots of other stuff. Did you know that there are over half a billion people doing stuff on Yahoo! every month? I find that very difficult to get my head round…that’s even more people than you get at a Rolling Stones gig isn’t it?

So what on earth are they all doing? And, more importantly, why should I/you/we care?

We’re starting up a new monthly email newsletter which will answer those questions. We believe that the stuff people are doing on Yahoo! is potentially very interesting and that “yes!”, we should care, because we might just discover some wonderful new things for ourselves.

So, if you agreed to let Yahoo! send you email when you set up your account, you can now look forward to seeing some of the fantastic, creative ways people use Yahoo! every month. And don’t worry, we won’t be trawling Yahoo! for embarrassing pictures or hilarious spelling mistakes… we respect the privacy of all our users and will not show anything without permission from the person who created it.

What else?

Will I get Yahoo! By You?
If you want to check whether or not you agreed to let us send you emails, click here. You can set your preferences as you please but remember – we’ll only ever send you stuff that we think you’ll find genuinely useful and interesting.

How can I get involved?
We want individual users to star in every issue of Yahoo! By You. If you’ve got some interesting things to share, you can volunteer yourself. Click here to become a Yahoo! By You Star!

Tell us what you think…
It’s not called Yahoo! By You for nothing. We need to know exactly what you think about this newsletter. Please leave comments, suggestions, rants against this post. Look forward to hearing from you.

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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The response was great from last week’s post about new features in All-New Mail, and it’s awesome to see how many of you are excited by the “Auto-Save” and “Download All” additions. As shocking as it might be, however, I managed to forget what might be the single greatest enhancement in the history of Yahoo! Mail.

***Drumroll please***

If you are using the All-New Mail you can now access the blog from a link within the Help dropdown! Of course if you are reading this you already know how to get to this blog, but now users will have another way to access the blog from right within Mail (along with the existing RSS Feed option).

Hopefully this will not only make it easier for some of you existing readers to find your way back to the blog, but should help expose it to even more people who didn’t even know it was here.

And while we’re on the topic of ways to access the blog, I thought I’d include some information for iPhone/iPod Touch users. If you add the YMail blog to the Home Screen you will see that we have provided a button icon to replace the screenshot you would otherwise get. I’m sure that sounds small, but I know that button icons are a big deal to a lot of iPhone enthusiasts. So add the blog to your Home Screen and visit from there as often as you like … with only one touch from your fingertip.

Speaking of iPhone, I’ve got something else you might like … but has nothing to do with Yahoo! It looks like the feature was included in the 1.1.1 release of the software, but you can now bring up the iPod controls, even when the phone is locked, by simply pressing the home button twice. I had already heard that doing this when unlocked brought up favorite phone contacts, but never heard about the iPod controls (a major pain point for me).

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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As I mentioned on this blog a few weeks back, the All-New Yahoo! Mail now works on the latest versions of Safari 3 for Mac. In that post I mentioned that there were a few other enhancements that were not limited to Mac users. Well now that just about everyone using the All-New Mail should be on the latest release, I figured I might as well offer up the details.

• Download All Attachments – you may have seen this new option within one of your recent messages, but as it suggests you can now download all attachments with a single click.
• Safari 3 support for Mac - as we already discussed, folks running the most recent update of Tiger (OS 10.4.11), as well as those using any version of Leopard (OS 10.5.x) can now use the All-New Yahoo! Mail with confidence.
• Improved support for Firefox 3.0 Beta - This one is tricky. Our guys worked hard to make sure that the release would support Firefox 3 as well, but then the Firefox folks went and updated the browser again before I posted (how dare they! ) so we are still working out the kinks. But don’t worry, because we are on the case.
• Auto-Save to Compose – you can still click the Save Draft button, but even if you forget we’ll save it for you. You can also review when the last time a message was autosaved by looking to the right of your compose toolbar.

Something that is important to note, once you send a message the draft automatically moves from your Drafts folder to your Sent folder. You can override this action by holding the Shift key when sending your message.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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I wanted to share one more new feature of the all-new mail with you. It’s something that you may have noticed already, but if not I thought I’d let you know that it’s there. First, a question (not applicable to you Apple users)… How many times have you been working on that all-important document, and all of a sudden – ZAP – your computer crashes and you lose all of your hard work?

Well with the all-new Yahoo! Mail, you never have to worry about that with your Yahoo! emails. As you type and the minutes tick away, the all-new Yahoo! mail is working in the background to help make sure that power failures and other niggly computer problems don’t make you lose that important email you’re writing. Of course I’m talking about the “auto-save” feature, which saves a copy of your email to the Drafts folder at regular intervals. You can tell your message has been saved into your Drafts folder as pictured here:

Of course you can always use the “Save Draft” button at the top of your message if you want to save it to your drafts folder more frequently.

So if you didn’t have time to finish your message or if you just needed to step away from the computer, not to worry, we’ll save your message to your Drafts folder and you can continue it at your leisure. And in the event when your computer should crash (I’m sure you Apple users are laughing at us Windows users) we’ve got you covered with the Auto-save feature.

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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This is a heads up intended only for you bulk senders, ISPs, and commercial emailers out there (basically corporations and businesses running their own mail servers). I’ve gotten word from the spam team that responses to our Postmaster troubleshooting forms are a little behind. In case you are wondering what that means, it’s a form accessible from the Postmaster section in Yahoo! Mail Help (http://postmaster.yahoo.com), for any institutional sender who feels their messages are being wrongly labeled as spam or who are receiving error messages or excessive deferrals from our inbound mail servers. Anyway, the delays have prompted follow-up inquiries that in turn delay things even more. We’re really sorry for the inconvenience, and wanted to let you know what we’re doing … and what you can do too.

On our end we are throwing more people at the problem and have made several changes to the inbound mail system, which should have us caught up soon. Meanwhile, there are things that you can do too. If you have already submitted your application, please be patient. We are aware of the delays and are fixing the problem. If you are about to submit a request, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you fill out the form completely and accurately.

That means that if there is a question you aren’t sure about, you should run it by your IT department. If you submit incomplete information, it means that we will have to email back and ask for the same information again, and that’s no fun for anyone.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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This doesn’t have anything to do with Yahoo! Mail, but I couldn’t resist sharing it. You might have seen the feature when it originally ran last month, but Yahoo! News featured former software engineer, and current budding rock star, Jonathan Coulton in the People of the Web section.

The story tickled me a few weeks back, but during some weekend traveling I had an opportunity to listen to more of his music and my friends and I thought it was fun, hilarious, and entertaining. Especially his folk rendition of a Sir Mix-a-lot classic (yep … that one).

Anyway, I’m still planning to provide you all with some quality Y! Mail content this week … but couldn’t resist.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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For your viewing pleasure, check out this video featuring the chat feature in Yahoo! Mail. I for one, think it’s very cool.

Having trouble seeing the video on this blog? Click here to view it.

Reminds me a lot of the emoticoncert video from a while back.

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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