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

Recently, we introduced a quick and easy way to consolidate all your different contacts lists into your Yahoo! Contacts. Whether you’ve imported the various address books that you’ve accumulated over the years or have a really big contact list, you may now find yourself with a few duplicate entries. If so, no problem, now it’s easier than ever to merge duplicate entries into one.

To get started, when you first open Yahoo! Contacts, just click the link to ‘Fix duplicate entries’. (There is also a link in the ‘Tools’ button at the top of your contacts window.)

The tool will scan your contacts list and present you with the duplicate entries that were found. To combine the duplicates into one, just click the button ‘Merge all EXACT’ and then ‘Yes’ to confirm.

OK, so it’s actually two clicks, but it really couldn’t be any easier to clean up your contacts list. If you would rather review each duplicate separately, just click the ‘Next’ button instead. A wizard will guide you through the process of merging each duplicate entry.

If you made a resolution to organize and clean up your address book for 2010 and were dreading doing it, now there is no excuse not to. What may have taken hours will now take just a couple of minutes.

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Hi everyone! My name is Ajay and I am a project manager for Yahoo! Mail and Contacts. Today, I’d like to show you how to add a splash of color to your Yahoo! Mailbox. These same themes are available in Yahoo! Mail and Contacts so you’ll be completely color coordinated! Here’s how to change the colors in your Yahoo! Mailbox:

If you use the All New Yahoo! Mail:

1. From the Yahoo! Mailbox click on the Options menu
2. Choose Color and then select the color theme of your choice
3. That’s it you’re done!

If you use Classic Mail:

1. Click on the Options menu
2. Choose Mail Options

3. Choose Colors

4. Choose the theme of your choice

5. Click save and go back to your Yahoo! Mailbox.
6. Enjoy!!

The color themes in Yahoo! Mail and Contacts are a great way for you to personalize your Mailbox. I personally like ‘Lime Green’ but the feedback you’ve been sending tells me that ‘Bubblegum’ (’Pink’ in the UK) is very popular too. Whichever theme you choose, I’m sure you’ll find one that’s right for you.

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Multiple email accounts dragging you down? Do you have too many contact lists in too many places? Following in the footsteps of Craig Wright’s post about the great new features in Yahoo! Contacts, I want to add to his list. We have made it easy for you to import, manage and consolidate your different contact lists into your Yahoo! Contacts.

A simple, easy to use form walks you through the steps of importing the various contact lists you’ve created over the years directly into your Yahoo! Contacts. You can choose to import your address books from Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and more.

You can find the contacts import tool in the ‘Options’ menu of the new Yahoo! Mail and on the Yahoo! Contacts welcome page. Or to get started right away click this link: http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/transfercontacts

Import contact lists from multiple providers in one go, or do one at a time. After a couple more clicks you’re done. And don’t worry if you have duplicate contacts. The ‘Clean up duplicates’ tool in Yahoo! Contacts makes it easy to combine any duplicate contact entries into one.

If you’re moving to Yahoo! Mail from another provider, you can even choose to send an email alert to the contacts that you are importing. Once the import process completes, your newly imported contacts are conveniently set up as a group. To view them, just open your contacts list in Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Contacts. Click ‘View All Contacts’ and you’ll find them grouped by the email service.

The import contacts tool is an easy and effective way to combine your various address books into one, easily managed contact list. Just like Apps in Mail, this is another tool to help you be more productive, more social and stay better connected.

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Hi everyone, my name is Craig and I am the engineering manager for Yahoo! Contacts. We’ve undergone some major changes lately, as you may have noticed. Here’s a quick update on what we have been up to lately.

A major goal for Yahoo! Contacts was to unify the experience of managing your contacts across the Yahoo! network. Before we made this change, every time another Yahoo! product wanted to integrate some form of contacts management functionality, they would have to build their own version of an address book.

Another goal was to create a product that could slip seamlessly anywhere in the Yahoo! network. We launched the new Contacts inside of Yahoo! Profiles, and have since replaced the new Yahoo! Mail and Classic Yahoo! Mail address book with the new Yahoo! Contacts. This means that all of our users will gain the benefits of new features and bug fixes all at the same time.

New features within Yahoo! Contacts:
For example, one of the latest-and-greatest features available now: Clean-up Duplicates Tool. With this new feature, you can reduce all of the duplicate contacts with a push of the button.

Another example from our latest release is the large improvement in performance. We know that when it comes to contact management, you want to get in, take care of the task at hand, and get back to what you were doing. We have significantly reduced the amount of code it takes to load the app, which translates to a much faster start-up time.

Also included in this release is some visual enhancements based on your feedback. For starters, we’ve added themes! Now you add your personal touch to Contacts by skinning it with color themes available in Yahoo! Mail. We also heard feedback from users on small screens like Netbooks that it was difficult to use Contacts. We have removed an one ad to give you more space for address book content – check it out.

Finally I wanted to call out one of our most important new features. There is a new option on the Tools menu, “Send Feedback.” Sending us a quick note via the Send Feedback link is a great way to let us know what we are doing right or what we are doing wrong! We are getting some great insights from this feedback already and we deeply consider your ideas, suggestions, and pain-points for future improvements to the product.

Let us know what you think!

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Here is some great news for iPhone users who are running the latest iPhone software. Apple and Yahoo! have collaborated to bring you the ability to sync your Yahoo! Calendar with your iPhone Calendar. We’re using an open standard (CalDAV) that has been developed by the CalConnect group, which Yahoo! and Apple are members.

Setting up your calendar to sync with your iPhone couldn’t be easier. There is nothing to download, and in just a few simple steps on your iPhone, all of your events will be synced – over the air – without having to plug into your computer. Now, you really can have a mobile calendar.

What could be better you ask? You can also share your calendar with your friends and family. When you do that, you’ll get to see their events on your phone as well.

We have a help page dedicated to helping you set up your calendar to sync with your iPhone. You can find out how here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/calendar/yahoocalendar/sync/sync-06.html

Before you get started, there are just a couple of pre-requisites to set up your calendar to sync. First, you have to be running the latest iPhone software (3.0 or higher). Second, by syncing with your iPhone, we will switch you over to the all new Yahoo! Calendar 2.0 (Beta). Find out more about the all-new Yahoo! Calendar.

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This month in the UK, the Office of Fair Trade is promoting their annual Scams Awareness Month. In support of their efforts, I’ve posted some scam avoidance tips on the UK Mail Blog. Since they apply just as much across the pond as they do State-side, I wanted to share them with you too. The first step in helping you to stay scam-free is to recognize the types of scams that are out there. Here are the three most common types that come in email form (which I’m sure some of you have seen before):

1. Phishing scams – These are email scams that claim to be from an organization, like a bank, and they ask you click on a link which takes you to a Website that looks real but is, in fact, fake. When you log in with your account details and password on this fake site, the bad guys gain access to your private information.
2. Lottery Scams – These are emails that tell you have won a local or foreign lottery and to get the money you have to pay processing fees and send personal details.
3. Advance fee or fund transfer schemes – These are also called Nigerian ‘419’ scams where you receive an email, often times from someone claiming to be in Africa or Asia, and claiming that they have access to huge sums of cash but need your help getting it out of the country. In this scam, the criminal offers to send you a check for $100,000 and you send him back a personal check for $90,000 and keep the difference. The scam is, of course, that the initial check is bogus but may take several weeks to clear, by which point the criminal is long gone with your money.

You know what? Your bank will NEVER ask you for a password in an email, you have NOT won the lottery and all you end up with for those huge sums is a ZERO balance in your bank account. I’ve been collaborating with our Spam Czar, Mark, and we’ve come up with these tips to help you avoid the scammers:

1. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is – If someone stopped you on the street and said he needed your help smuggling millions of dollars out of the country, you’d be pretty suspicious. We recommend the same type of skepticism when you’re online. If you didn’t enter that Sweepstakes or Lottery, there’s no way that you won. Be extra suspicious if someone offers to send you money up front — as honest as I’m sure you are, that wealthy prince who offers to buy your iPod for 10 times its value isn’t as gullible as he seems.
2. Check the FROM line – One big giveaway is when a seemingly official message originates from a generic e-mail address. If your bank has something to say to you, it won’t come from “security_services_293@freemail.com,” and when the IRS discovers a tax error in your favor, they won’t write to you from a personal account like “charlotte.magnolia@internetonline.gr” Check the return address and make sure it looks legit (including looking for spelling errors!)
3. Beware if someone requests personal information or any payment over e-mail – Yahoo! and other respected Internet companies will never request your username or password over e-mail, and neither will your bank, credit card company, or insurance agency. If a message is asking you to e-mail your sensitive information, that’s an immediate red flag. Likewise, legitimate companies will not request money up front for you to claim a prize you’ve won.

For good measure I’m including some of the choicest scam emails we’ve seen in the recent past. By arming with yourselves with the knowledge of what scams are out there and how to avoid them, you’ll be much safer online. As always, if you do see one of these scams, please do your part and click the “Spam” button inside Yahoo! Mail – it’s the single strongest way to let us know so that we can block these terrible messages.

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Just a few months back we told you about the launch of an updated version of the Yahoo! Calendar. The all-new Yahoo! Calendar Beta offers a host of great features like open standards (iCalendar), personalization with Flickr and drag-and-drop functionality to name just a few.

Since launching the public beta back in October, the Calendar team has been working hard behind the scenes to add more of the fantastically fabulous features (how’s that for alliteration) that you’ve been asking for. So it is with great pleasure that I can tell you they’ve just released some really exciting new stuff for you to enjoy:

• New Search: You can now search both Calendar and Notepad based on words in your event titles or notes.
• To-Do Lists: Now you can have multiple to-do lists (i.e. Personal, Work, etc.), and you can share to-do lists just like you can share your calendar. And if you don’t like to-do lists, you can hide them (just click and drag the to-do list to close it).
• Print: There’s a new print button that allows you to print your Month, Week or Day view.
• Right-click: A new right-click shortcut menu lets you add and view events, plus more. Give it a try!

Sounds pretty good, right? I especially like the new right-click menu to easily add an event to my calendar. If you haven’t tried the All-new Calendar Beta yet, maybe now is the time. You can move yourself over to the new calendar by following this link: http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com/. (Just a quick note: if you want to switch back, the new stuff you add won’t come back with you.)

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As you may have heard, we’ve been working on a new smarter inbox to help make your life easier. We’re happy to announce that today, some of you will begin to experience the smarter inbox, and we wanted to give everyone a chance to see what it looks like and what it can do.

The smarter inbox experience features a new Yahoo! Mail Welcome Page which surfaces messages, information and activity updates you care about most, as well as an updated inbox and folder view that filters messages from your personal connections.

The smarter Yahoo! Mail inbox also gives you immediate access to relevant third-party applications like Flickr, Flixster and Xoopit allowing you to do much more, and be more efficient, all from within your inbox. Take a look now and let us know what you think!

- Yahoo! Mail Team

Update: We are conducting a very limited beta test right now of the open applications in Yahoo! Mail. Only our power users, who were invited into the limited beta, can test out the new applications at beta.mail.yahoo.com. We will be extending this beta test to additional users over the coming months.

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Back when I posted about updates to the Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop beta (get the latest version here) many people were intrigued. It was, after all, our first real step into the IMAP world, and it also represented a great way for users with multiple Yahoo! accounts to easily keep track of them without the dreaded logout-login-logout-login.

One of the more frequent comments from users had to do with something that we alluded to but was not yet supported … synchronizing your Yahoo! Contacts and Calendar with Zimbra.  Well the latest version, also dubbed “beta 5″, does just that.

To take advantage of the Calendar sync you will have to be on the new Yahoo! Calendar Beta (CalDav supported), but anyone should be able to sync their Contacts.  That was actually supported with a recent version, but I dropped the ball on announcing it.

After you have installed or updated your Zimbra software, go to the Account Setup link and then look for the link to Edit your account details.  You should see a whole bunch of fun Synchronization Settings to select.  Just like the first time you set up your Zimbra, it should take some time to populate.  But once it finishes the first sync it should be much faster.

If you run into problems you can head over to the Zimbra Desktop forums to give feedback or report issues.

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Hopefully you saw that the Calendar team already restored the ability for users to switch back from the beta, but I wanted to make sure the team isn’t stopping there.  The team recently released an update that addresses the most frequently reported issues and tunes up performance (think timezone problems and import URL specs…among other things).

They’re also already hard at work on the next batch of features, including the top-rated requests from users via the Yahoo Calendar Suggestion Board. So be sure to weigh in if you want to get your feature on the roadmap.

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