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

I want to let you know about some changes coming to some of the menus in the All-New version of Yahoo! Mail. We’re moving a couple of options to new places and renaming others. It’s all to make them easier to find.

The Mail Menu items are being reorganized and grouped together under ‘Actions‘ and we’re adding a new menu item called ‘Show‘. Here is a detailed look:

The ‘Actions’ menu changes are as shown here

• ‘Select’ choices have been added to easily select all emails or just the ones that you can view in your Inbox.
• We’ve added ‘Sort by’ choices to give you better control on how you display the emails in your Inbox.
• ‘Print Message’ is changing to ‘Print Email…’
• ‘Filter Messages Like This…’ changes to ‘Filter Emails Like This…’
• ‘Full Header’ will now be ‘View Full Header’

We are also adding a ‘Show‘ menu that will allow you to view emails only from your Contacts or Connections. To view emails from your Connections, you will have to turn on the connection related features in Yahoo! Mail. You can find out how to do that in the next section.

There are also some changes to the ‘Options‘ Menu that is at the top right of your Inbox:

Here is everything you need to know about the new ‘Options‘ menu:

• We’ve added a menu item labeled ‘Show’ – here you can show or hide the preview pane, as well as some of the attribute columns of your email list (attachments, size and flag columns). Don’t forget that using the ‘v’ shortcut key also shows and hides the Preview Pane.
• ‘Mail Options‘ is changing to ‘More Options…‘ – this is where you can enable/disable the Connection related features, set up filters, turn on your Vacation response and more.
• ‘Add Application‘ is changing to ‘Add Application…‘ – this lets you add Apps like ‘Attach Large Files’, ‘Edit Photos’ and many others.
• ‘Mail Plus’ changes to ‘Mail Plus…’ and allows you to enjoy the benefits of Yahoo! Mail Plus
• ‘Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic’ is now just ‘Mail Classic…’ and lets you switch back to the Classic version of Yahoo! Mail

While that might seem like a lot, it’s actually organizing items so that they are much easier to find. And don’t forget about all the great keyboard shortcuts you can use in the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Some of these menu items can be done with one keystroke. Give it a try… Go to your Inbox and hit the ‘v’ key. Voila, you get the preview pane!

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Here’s a reminder for all the fellas out there (like me); Don’t forget that Valentine’s Day is coming up this Sunday (that’s the 14th of February). And of course a big Happy Chinese New Year!! Seriously though, I had totally forgot until just the other day.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to go running around looking for chocolates, flowers or trying to score that 8pm dinner reservation. With the Yahoo! Greetings app in the all new mail, you can send a Valentine’s card without even leaving your Inbox.

Let’s give it a try. Just click on Yahoo! Greetings in the applications pane of your Inbox. If it’s not listed there, just click the little plus sign next to ‘Applications’ and you can add it to your list.

Once the application opens, you can find the right card to send. Select ‘love & dating ecard’ and click ‘go’ to see a list of possible Valentine’s cards. Scroll through the list of cards and click on the one that suits you. Fill in your details, give it the personal touch with your own message and then click send. That’s it, you’re done. Now you can go back to watching Sports Center highlights.

Flowers are great but emails are too, so send your love without the thorns. Be advised, I am still getting chocolates and flowers (I like to cover all the bases).

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It’s been over 12 years since Yahoo! Mail launched with just 3 Megabytes of storage. Fast forward to present day with unlimited storage, 25 Megabyte attachments, chat in mail, ‘drag and drop’ to name just a few enhancements we’ve added over the years. And to make sure you are getting the most out of Yahoo! Mail (and the rest of today’s modern Web-based applications) we suggest upgrading to a modern browser.

There are a host of modern browser options and they are all supported by Yahoo! Mail.

• Firefox 3.x +
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.x +
• Safari 3.0 +
• Google Chrome 4.0 +

Believe it or not, it’s been almost 10 years since Internet Explorer 6 was released, and 26% of Internet users are still using it. If you are still using an older browser, we will be encouraging you to upgrade to the latest version soon. We even have the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox that give you an optimized, one-click access to Yahoo! Mail.

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What a year it’s been for Yahoo! Mail. I can tell you that all of us on the Global Yahoo! Mail team have been working hard throughout 2009 to deliver you a more social and more productive Yahoo! Mail that lets you get the important things done quickly and easily. In short, we’re working to give you the best email experience on the Web. I think you’ll agree with me, all that hard work has paid off. We’ve delivered some pretty great things to your Yahoo! Mailbox (pun intended).

As is usual at this time of year, it’s time to take a look back and see what we’ve been able to accomplish in these short 12 months. Here are the highlights (in no particular order):

• To kick off 2009 we gave you a smarter, more social Mailbox. With the new welcome page “What’s New” in Yahoo! Mail you can now easily find the important mail from those who matter most. In addition you can now get updates from your connections. And from the Inbox you can filter your mail to see just the mail from your contacts or connections.
• We launched Yahoo! Messenger in Classic Mail. It seems like it’s been a part of the Classic Mail forever, but the ability to instantly chat with your friends and family in the classic version of Yahoo! Mail has only been around since the beginning of the year.
• We’ve added fantastic new Apps in Yahoo! Mail to let you be more productive right from your Inbox. (Of course we have to thank our Apps partners who also worked very hard to deliver you these great tools.) Apps like Edit Photos from Picnik let you easily share and edit photos right from within your Inbox. The ‘Attach Large Files’ from ZumoDrive lets you share up to 100MB files. Apps like Pingg and Evite allow you easily manage your social calendar.
• One of our goals is to help you do more with your photos in your Yahoo! Mailbox. We want to make photos an integral part of your Mail experience. Our acquisition of Xoopit will go a long way to make that a reality.
• In order to send all those photos (and other attachment types) we recently launched the ability for you to add attachments up to 25MB to a single email. That’s about 12 photos if your camera takes about 2MB photos. And to help you attach those files, we launched an enhanced attachment feature for the all-new version of Yahoo! Mail. It allows you drag and drop your attachments right into your email. Plus you can scale and rotate your photo attachments.
• We’ve also been working hard behind the scenes to improve the speed of Yahoo! Mail. In the US we have achieved more than a 16% improvement in performance over the year. And, Yahoo! Mail is the fastest Webmail in the UK (based on our tests using 3rd party tools). So, not only have we given you more tools to increase your productivity, we’ve made it even faster to get things done.
• Our friends on the Address book team recently launched the updated Yahoo! Contacts. It goes a long way to unify the Contacts experience across the Yahoo! network and fits seamlessly into the all-new Yahoo! Mail. Plus the new clean-up duplicates tool is a great way to clean up your list of contacts.
• Our ongoing efforts to reduce spam and helping you keep safe in Mail have seen our lowest level of spam in recent history. We told you back at the beginning of the year about some of what the anti-spam team has been working on in the background, and we hope you’re all seeing the continued improvement. Plus we are always committed to keeping you safer online through safety tips on this blog.
• Thanks to our colleagues on the Front Page team you can now preview your Inbox right from the Mail tab on the newly redesigned Yahoo! Homepage.
• Finally, we know that many of you are mobile with your mail. So we have to give a shout out and congratulations to the Mobile Team who just went GA with an updated Mobile mail experience. Just point your mobile browser over to m.yahoo.com/mail to have a look. I definitely give it two thumbs up, way up!

Wow! That’s a lot, and those are just the highlights! Rest assured, we are prepared to work even harder next year. We are aiming to give you a better photo sharing experience, more amazing third party Apps and an enhanced Yahoo! Calendar to name just a few.

So, from all of us on the Yahoo! Mail team, I want to wish you and everyone on your Yahoo! Contacts list a very happy holiday season and all the best for the New Year.

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In the spirit of the holidays, Yahoo! is encouraging our community to create a ripple of good around the world by doing random acts of kindness. You in?

Surprise someone by paying for their morning coffee. Or drop off a warm coat at the homeless shelter. Then update your Yahoo! status to inspire your friends and family to do something good for someone else.

Through the end of the year, you will see a heart in your Yahoo! Mail status update box. Click on the heart to tell your friends and family what you are doing. Then click on the exclamation point to shuffle through ideas for random acts of kindness. And feel free to come up with your own random acts of kindness – we’re sure you have quite a few up your sleeve!

Once you’ve updated your status, check out what others are doing to spread kindness around the world at http://kindness.yahoo.com.

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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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Smiley faces in emails? It’s definitely not on your list of favorites. A while back we took a poll and it ranked pretty high up on the list of email pet peeves. But when you’re chatting with your friends in Yahoo! Mail, then that’s another story.
Smilies and text speak are an integral part of chatting. If you’re tired of the usual and and , surprise your friends with some different emoticons. They’ll be ROTFL.

Here is a list of the hidden emoticons (the ones you won’t find in the list in Mail). If you need to brush up on the usual suspects, you can find the complete list of emoticons here.

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I’m happy to report that the issue with the spell checking function in the All-new Yahoo! Mail has been fixed. Misspelled words are now correctly replaced. This fixes the issue for all languages including Spanish, German, Italian and French.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused. As always, please feel free to contact our customer care team if you are having issues with your email.

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I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. I might have to loosen my belt one notch for a couple of days, or at least until next month when I make that New Year’s resolution to exercise. One thing I won’t have to worry about is what to do with all those holiday photos of friends, family and celebrations. Yahoo! Mail makes it easy to store, create and share all your photos right from your inbox.

Save more. With Yahoo! Mail you have unlimited storage. You never have to worry about having to delete photos because your mailbox is getting too full. Feel free to keep all those photos your friends and family send. Well, maybe you don’t need to keep that one of Uncle Joe napping on the La-Z-Boy.

Send more. Yahoo! Mail lets you send emails with up to 25 Megabyte attachments. You can send more photos at once. You can send 12 pics with just one email assuming that each photo is about 2 Megabytes. Just make sure your recipients can receive emails that big. If not, you should encourage them to switch to Yahoo! Mail.

Do more. With our Apps, you’re not limited to just sending and receiving photos in Yahoo! Mail. Be creative with your photos right from your inbox. Without a doubt, the Edit Photos application is my favorite app in Yahoo! Mail. The App created by Picnik helps you clean up your snapshots with the ability to crop, resize, and reduce red-eye. Once you’re done touching-up your photo, add effects, frames and text. Then, once your masterpiece is complete, easily save and share your photo.

You can even share your Flickr photos right from your Yahoo! Mailbox. Load up the Flickr App and you can view the photostream and photo sets of you and your friends. Plus, share your photos and photo sets with the click of a button. Congrats to the Flickr team for being first on Time’s list of the 50 Best Websites of 2009. Don’t have a Flickr account yet? Sign up to Flickr using your existing Yahoo! ID.

Yahoo! Mail makes it easy to be more productive and more social. And now that the holiday season has arrived, I know you’re going to really appreciate all those great photo sharing features.

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A few of you have been reporting that you are having issues with the spell-checker in the new version of Yahoo! Mail. I just want to let you know that we are aware of the issue and will have a fix out soon.

In the meantime, you can use the built-in spell checking functionality of some of today’s modern browsers. For example, the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari all have in-line spell checkers. If you don’t have one of those browsers installed or don’t want to install one, you can use classic Yahoo! Mail until we have rolled out the fix (from ‘Options’ click the ‘Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic’ link).

You can read more on our help pages, or contact out customer care team.

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