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

With Yahoo! Mail offering unlimited storage, I find myself using the delete button less and less these days. And with the ability to move messages to folders with one keystroke (in the all-new version of Mail), it’s more important than ever to be able to easily and quickly find messages.

Simple Searching
With just a simple keyword search, like “orders”, we give you the option to filter search results by a whole host of options. Whether you want to narrow your results by Date, Folder, Sender etc. they are all listed for you in a very nice, clickable, list (right-hand side in the new Mail, left-hand side of Classic Mail). But that just scratches the surface of what you can do.

Shortcuts
For the more advanced searchers of the world (plus those who prefer typing to clicking), you can filter your searches from directly within the search box. Think of the filters as little search shortcuts for your Mailbox.

Let’s take a look at an example:
Say you want to find all of your emails in your Mailbox with the subject pictures?
- In the search box, type: subject:pictures

But you have a ton of emails with pictures. You want to find that fantastic picture from Dave and you remember he called it cool.
- In the search box, type: subject:”cool picture” from:dave

On the other hand, if lot’s of people send you cool pics, but you’ve never really liked the ones that Dave sends you, you can hide Dave’s messages from the search results using the ‘-’ (dash) to omit his results
- In the search box, type: subject:”cool pictures” –from:dave

Attachments
Did you know that you can search for different types of attachments using search in Yahoo! Mail? And even better, you can search INSIDE attachments. Yes, that’s right, I said inside. I know what you’re saying – “That’s not possible from a web mail provider.” Well it is possible, and you can do search inside Word documents, Excel and PDFs with Yahoo! Mail. I’m not aware of any other free Web mail provider that does that!

Let’s use one of those shortcuts.
- In the search box, type: from:dave attachment:”restaurant list”

Why do I care about this? Well, since Dave sends so many emails with attachments to me, being able to search inside attachments I can find the document he sent me with his restaurant recommendations. And we even give a little preview and highlight the part of the document with the search terms.

More with Attachments
There are plenty of other things you can do with the attachment shortcuts. You are able to search for an attachment name, type and number of attachments. Want to see a list of boarding pass PDFs you have received from American after checking in?
- In the search box, type: from:american attachmenttype:pdf

Further reading
If any of this is slightly confusing or you want to learn more, we’ve created some tutorials. Tutorial topics include: Quick Searches, Searching for Messages, Narrowing Search Results. And there is a complete list of these Yahoo Mail search shortcuts in our help pages.

Now if only I could find my car keys…

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Last week we took a look at some of the keyboard shortcuts available in the all-new Yahoo! Mail. We looked at the basics: opening and closing a message, composing and sending, etc. Today I wanted to dive a little deeper and look at some shortcuts that really make Yahoo! Mail great and you incredibly productive.

Moving messages with a single keystroke:
Do you use personal folders to keep your mailbox organized? Did you know that the numbers 1-9 on your keyboard correspond to the first 9 of your folders? So when you’re finished reading a message, just press the right number and off it goes. No need to click and drag.

Here are some other quick tips for moving messages:

• You can see which number your folder is by clicking the ‘Move’ button at the top of your mailbox. Your folders are listed in numerical order
• If you want to make it even easier, just rename your folders and put a number in front of the folder name (i.e. 1 Family, 2 Orders, etc).
• If you like the idea of renaming folders use the F2 key to rename a folder
• Finally, 0 (zero) moves a message from any folder back to the Inbox
• We’ve stopped at 9. So if you want to move a message to the 10th folder in your list, you’ll have to grab that mouse.

Navigate your mailbox without a mouse:
One of the features that I think makes the new Yahoo! Mail so great is the ability to have multiple messages (tabs) open at the same time from right inside your mailbox. Using CTRL+] (that’s the right bracket key) will move from one tab to another (going from left to right). Need to go the other direction CTRL+[ (that’s the left bracket key).

No need to stop there. Hitting TAB will let your navigate all around your Mailbox. This time SHIFT+TAB sends you the other way around. Looking at your Inbox? Need to perform a search? Just hit SHIFT+TAB and your cursor goes into the search box. Type your query and hit Enter.

Just a reminder that the complete list of shortcuts can be found on our help site. And don’t forget you can always look at the tool-tips when you mouse over a link.

I hope you find these features as useful as I do. Every time I find that I have to use an email that isn’t Yahoo Mail (for testing purposes only, of course) I’m always disappointed when I can’t use my keyboard.

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Now, I know, for most, when using a computer reaching for the mouse is almost second nature. You probably don’t even realize you’re doing it. I grew up in the age of DOS, if you can believe it (certainly shows you what a dinosaur I am). My first computer didn’t come with a mouse, so I learned to use a computer using nothing but a keyboard. Which is why – for me – the keyboard shortcuts in the all-new version of Yahoo! mail are fantastic. I can go almost a whole session without ever having to reach for the mouse. Who needs drag and drop, or point and click, when you can do the exact same thing with a single keystroke?

I challenge you to go a whole session of email reading and writing without reaching for that mouse and only using Yahoo! Mail’s keyboard shortcut. Can’t be done you say? Assuming you already have the all-new version of Yahoo! mail open, let’s give it a try. (Why not use Alt-Tab to get there?)

Got a new message you want to read? Wait – don’t do it – don’t reach for that mouse.

• Just use your up and down arrows on your keyboard until you’ve highlighted the message you want to read and hit ‘Enter‘. BAM!! – the message opens in a new tab.
• Done reading? Hit the escape – ‘Esc‘ – key and the message closes.
• Want to delete the message? Hit the ‘Delete‘ key. Say goodbye to that message.

Want to write a new message? Keep you hands off that mouse!

• If you are looking at your Inbox, just hit the ‘n’ key. Open sesame. A new message opens and your cursor is in the To: field.
• Start typing a contact and Auto-complete takes over. Highlight the right contact from the list using the up or down arrows and hit ‘Tab’. That’s it you’ve entered a contact.
• Need another? Repeat above.
• Need a Cc:? Hit ‘Tab’ and presto, you’re in the Cc: field. Just do the same thing you just did in the To: field.
• Hit ‘Tab’ again and you’re in the Subject: field.
• Hit ‘Tab’ again to get to the Message body.
• Finished composing your email already? Still no need for that mouse. On your keyboard, just press and hold Control and then Enter (Ctrl+Enter) and away it goes. (That shortcut should look familiar to MS Outlook users)

Those are two of the things that we do most with email (reading and writing), completed without touching that mouse. I know! It IS very cool!! And I guarantee – once you get used to it – it’s quicker and easier to do than the same with a mouse.

There’s a lot more keyboard shortcuts than the ones above. You can do almost everything in Yahoo! Mail with a single keystroke. It’s easy to find out what they are too. You can navigate on over to this help page, which lists all the available keyboard shortcuts. Alternatively, you can use your mouse (the last time you’ll need to touch that, I promise) and the menus and mouse-overs show you what keystroke does the same thing. Take a look at the screenshots below to see which letters denote the equivalent keyboard shortcut.

So what can’t you accomplish with the keyboard? To be honest, not much. I guess the main things that I would like to see a keyboard shortcut for are spell checking, attaching files and switching between rich-text and plain text when composing an email. But that’s about it.

I can tell you my favorite sequence of keyboard shortcuts. I get a lot of stuff that isn’t junk, but I don’t necessarily want to read all the time. Mostly newsletters and such. Plus, I’m kind of a neat freak and I don’t like ‘unread’ messages in my trash folder (I don’t know why). So here’s what I do… I use ‘Shift’+arrow down to highlight the messages I don’t want. Then I hit ‘k’ to mark them all read. Then I hit ‘Delete’ to send them all to the trash. That’s it 10 messages deleted in a matter of seconds and no mouse needed.

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You’ve all probably seen some sort of scam email, and by now you probably think you’ll never be fooled by one. But from time to time, I get one that I think is particularly cunning. And it reminds me that it’s never a bad thing to have a little refresher course on how to avoid be the victim of phishing scams. I received this email over the weekend, and thought I’d share it with you as a particularly good example of a phishing email.

Phishing, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is the act of trying to trick you into revealing your account and login information via a fake email or fake Website. The one pictured above is a prime example of a phishing email, which uses a scare tactic to try to solicit you to send your account details and password. Here I’m being asked for the password for my Yahoo! account, and the email threatens that I could lose my account if I don’t send my info. It could just as easily been my banking information.

The most important thing you need to know is that we will never ask you for your password. NEVER!! And we would certainly never ask you to give us any of your account information unsolicited. Banking sites, like Yahoo!, are the same and you will never be asked for your account details in an email.

So if you receive an email like the one above, don’t fall for it. Just delete it, or better yet, report it using this form.

Find more tips for online safety in this blog post, and this one too.

Happy emailing,
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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In case you missed it, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone is now available for download on from the iPhone App Store. I have to admit, I don’t have an iPhone – I’m a BlackBerry user – but I’ve seen it in action and it’s very, very cool. So cool, in fact, Apple have made it a featured application in the App Store in iTunes (scroll to the bottom of that page, if the link doesn’t take you there automagically).

The top features for the new Messenger version for the iPhone are:

• Instant Messaging (of course)
• Photo Sharing
• Stealth Settings
• Custom Status Messages
• And more…

If you’d like to see it in action, Sarah on the Messenger team has called out the top Messenger for iPhone features in more detail. And they have put together a short video of Messenger for the iPhone in action.

It’s almost enough for me to take the plunge and buy an iPhone, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. But for the moment, I’m sticking with my Blackberry, which of course has its own BlackBerry Yahoo! Instant Messenger application. I use it all the time, and especially like the way I can have conversations appear my main BB message list. That way I can go back to my important emails while I wait for John to tell me where he wants to go for lunch.

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