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

Every now and again the need arises to send big files as attachments. Normally they never exceed 25 Megabytes, so you’re covered with Yahoo! Mail. But even in the case where you have one file, or even a bunch of files over 25 Megabytes, with the ‘Attach Large Files’ app by drop.io in the all-new Yahoo! Mail, you can attach files up to 100 Megabytes. So now there’s a way to share those home videos, large presentations and all your photos at once.

You can find the Attach Large Files app in the Applications section underneath your folders. (If you don’t see it listed, you can add it to your list by clicking the plus sign.) To get started just click on the ‘Attach Large Files’ app.

After you agree and then click to get started, you can right away begin using the app to attach and send up to 100 Megabyte attachments. It doesn’t have to be just one file, you can upload multiple attachments in a single go. Just keep selecting all the files that you want to attach and when you’re ready, click the ‘Upload and Compose Email’. The app will tell you how much more space you have available. It’s that simple.

Once the files have finished uploading, the Attach Large Files app will open up a new message with the files already attached. The files will be available for downloading for 30 days after you send them, and your upload history is saved so you can resend again if you like. And you don’t have to worry whether or not your recipient’s Inbox can handle these attachments because the attachment is stored over at our app partner drop.io.

It really couldn’t be easier. The only thing to note is for people that like to write emails in ‘Plain Text’. With ‘Attach Large Files’, you have to compose your emails in ‘Rich Text’, but the App will prompt you to change to ‘Rich Text’ if you are not already doing that.

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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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It seems like only yesterday we launched the smarter and more social features in Yahoo! Mail. With the new welcome page – ‘What’s New’ – you can now easily find the important mail from those who matter most. In addition, you can now get updates from people you’re close to. And from the Inbox and folders, you can filter your mail to see just the mail from your contacts or connections.

I know that for some of you the new smarter and more social features haven’t been turned on yet. So I wanted to let you know that, shortly, these great new features will be added to everyone’s ‘What’s New’ page. So let me take this opportunity to guide you through the upcoming changes.

We are adding two new sections (they are highlighted in red) that will be above the Today section:

• Recent Unread Emails from Contacts (or Connections): This section shows you the most recent emails that you’ve received from the people in your contacts list. You can also change this to show the new emails from the people that you are connected to by clicking the down arrow. If you click on one of the emails listed you will open that email.
• Updates: This section shows you what your connections are doing on the places that they regularly visit. You can get updates from sites like Twitter, Blogger, Yelp, YouTube and many more. You can also share what you are doing by managing your updates. If you would rather see news at the top just click that down arrow to the right and the Updates section will move below the Today section.

From reading your feedback, I know that those who have these features really like them. However, if you would rather turn off these features, you can. Just click the ‘Options’ link at the top right of your Inbox and then ‘Mail Options’. Un-tick the checkbox labeled ‘Enable Connection-related features’ and then ‘Save Changes’. The next time you login to Mail you will only see the Today section.

The changes are rolling out over the next few months to both the Classic and All-New versions of Yahoo! Mail, so you may not get the new ‘What’s New’ page for a little while. If you don’t have it and would like to try it out, just create a profile, and you’ll get the new features.

Happy New Year!

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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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Congratulations to our colleagues down the hall! They have officially taken the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger 10 out of beta and the general download is available from the Messenger site.

The latest version of Messenger adds a number of great features and enhancements. Here are the highlights:

• Hi-quality video calling – This has to be my favorite. Incredible quality video calls to friends and family right in the IM window.
• Yahoo Updates view of your contacts list – If your friends and family are sharing their status updates, you can view a live stream of what they’re up to on the ‘Y! Updates’ tab of the Messenger Window.
• Yahoo! Messenger in your language – Messenger users using the U.S. version can now choose from 16 different languages. Just choose a new language from the sign-in screen when you start messenger.

Don’t forget there are 29 local language versions available, so choose the version that’s right for you. You can download the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger here: http://messenger.yahoo.com/download/.

To find out more, and for a video tutorial, visit the Yahoo! Messenger blog.

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You might have noticed that we unveiled our new global marketing campaign yesterday. It includes a new video ad – ‘Anthem’ – that features the many ways that Yahoo! connects our users to the people and things that matter most to them. At the heart of the campaign is YOU and how you use Yahoo! to make the Internet your own.

Of course, as a proud member of the great team at Yahoo! Mail, I think nowhere is the spirit of YOU more personified than with Yahoo! Mail. With our new Mail we are helping you connect, share and do more than ever before right from within your Inbox. Our most recent improvements help you:

• see emails and updates from the people that matter most
• attach and upload files and photos of up to 25MB
• do more with useful apps (like editing photos, sending invitations) right from your Inbox

And we will continue to innovate and enhance Yahoo! Mail to make sure that we provide you with the best Mail experience on the Internet.

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It’s a big day for apps in Yahoo! Mail. We first got the low-down on the pingg Invitations app, then the Attach Large Files app, now we have Gabe Huerta from the Evite team to introduce us to the new Evite app that lets you create, send and manage invitations.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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Evite is coming together with Yahoo! Mail to make getting friends together even easier! With the Evite application, Yahoo! Mail users can send friends an invitation without having to leave their Yahoo! Inbox.

Yahoo! Mail users will get access to Evite’s exclusive invitation designs, perfect for any and every type of event. Not only is an Evite invitation more festive than just sending an email, users can manage all their friends’ RSVPs in one place without having to juggle dozens of emails.

The Evite application also helps users keep track of all their Evite events with a simple upcoming events tracker right in the application, as well as adding Evite events to their Yahoo! Calendar. Enjoy!

- Gabe Huerta, Evite

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From an Invitation app we go to large file attachments… For this post we have Scott Schwanbeck from the drop.io team. He’s going to tell you all about the Attach Large Files app his company developed for Yahoo! Mail. It let’s you send up to 100MB and rich media files with your Yahoo! emails.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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Today, we’re pleased to announce that people using Yahoo! Mail now have the ability to attach up to 100MB of files to each email using drop.io’s new Attach Large Files application. Best of all, it only takes one click and there is no sign-up or registration!

Drop.io is the simplest way to privately share exactly what you want with whom you want online – all in real-time and across all platforms (web, mobile and more).
Our application makes it easier to share groups of photos, documents, movies and more, by combining the power of drop.io as a robust media & file sharing platform with Yahoo! Mail, one of the world’s most popular email services.

People can access the Attach Large Files app from the Applications Box in the lower left-hand corner of their Yahoo! Mail inbox and using the app is simple:

1. Click “Attach Large Files” — this brings you to the drop.io welcome page
2. Next click “Select Files” — add as many files from your computer as you want up to 100MB. You’ll recognize drop.io’s distinct upload interface that displays the queued files, their file size and allows you to cancel any of them either before or during upload.
3. Next click “Upload and Compose Email” – users are brought to a new email, populated with thumbnails and links to view and download the attachments.

When your recipient opens the email, they have the option to click to view and download individual files, or the whole group.

The application allows people to save previously sent groups of attached files that can later be viewed or resent. It also integrates several useful drop.io functions like voicemail and conference calling.

The Attach Large Files app was built entirely on drop.io’s robust and open API. We are excited to see our API continue to be used as a springboard for other platforms to leverage drop.io’s powerful, real-time file sharing, collaboration and conversion engine to help power content sharing in the context of communication platforms.

Please check out our video screencast for more details about how the app works.

We hope you enjoy sharing more files using Yahoo! Mail and the drop.io app.

-Scott Schwanbeck, drop.io

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As you know from our earlier post, today we’re launching some great new apps in Yahoo! Mail. And who better to tell you about them than the folks who created the app. Let me take a moment to introduce you to Lorien Gabel, the co-Founder & CEO of pingg. He’s going to tell you all about the great new pingg Invitations app his company developed that let’s you easily create, send and manage stylish invitations right from Yahoo! Mail.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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Please excuse us while we celebrate a little; we’re a company that’s all about parties and entertaining, so it’s one of the things we do best. Today marks an important and exciting opportunity for us here at pingg. Today’s celebration is all about appreciation for our friends at Yahoo! Mail, who are rolling out the pingg Invitations app, allowing people to plan events with pingg right within Yahoo! Mail. Online invitations are incredibly popular, with at least five million events planned online each month, by our estimate. By all accounts an impressive figure, online invitations will only continue to grow as people look for stylish, eco-conscious and economical ways to entertain and communicate.

Since our launch in March of 2008, we’ve been offering a more stylish way to send and manage online invitations. Our gallery features beautiful, exclusive images contributed by renowned artists and style icons such as Martha Stewart, celebrity, fashion & nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan and groundbreaking graffiti artist Erni Vales, as well as up-and-coming illustrators and painters like Jessica Gonacha and Ashley Mills. We’ve always focused on design and aesthetics for modern hosts who are excited by the idea of being able to send stylish invitations online.

To find the pingg Invitations app, simply log into Yahoo! Mail and click the pingg Invitations icon in your new Applications Box on the left-side column. Once you get started, here are some of the specific activities you select from – all around making the invite process that much easier:

• Choose from pingg’s complete gallery of images, including artwork from our unique Designer Series, to create, personalize and send invitations right from your Yahoo! Mail inbox
• Monitor RSVPs, guest comments and status updates for all of your events in once place via the comprehensive dashboard
• Modify your invitation or send e-mail messages to individual guests with one click; set up reminder messages and thank you notes
• Get tips and other great content from friends of pingg like Martha Stewart, giggle.com, Notes On A Party and Sugar Network to help you entertain in style
• Grab contacts from your Yahoo! Mail address book
• Add events to your Yahoo! Calendar from within the app
• Add a map from Yahoo! Maps

Here is a look at how the pingg Invitations app will work for folks on Yahoo! Mail. We think it’s quite a nice fit.

Over the past year and a half as we’ve established our place within the entertaining industry, we’ve found countless reasons to celebrate and working with Yahoo! Mail is another great excuse to get the champagne flowing again. We are truly flattered to be working with a company who clearly sees the merit in collaborating with smaller, innovative start-ups like ourselves to provide their audience with the best tools for the things they love to do online.

So whether it’s for a milestone birthday, a Tuesday night dinner party, a client-appreciation event or an exotic destination wedding, we invite you to celebrate with pingg, too. That’s certainly what we’ll be doing; that and making sure your invitations are always well sent.

-Lorien Gabel, Co-Founder & CEO, pingg

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With the launch of the new and improved Yahoo! Mail a couple of weeks ago, we announced the upcoming addition of a set of apps to help you be more productive and do more within Mail. Well, today is the big day! We’ve added new apps and made improvements to ones you already know and love. And they can all be found right in the handy Applications box on the lower left-hand corner of your Yahoo! Mail inbox.

One of the additions to our app family is pingg Invitations. With pingg Invitations, you can choose from a wide selection of invites featuring a range of designs, including ones created by well known artists and photographers. Even more impressive are the super slick host management (party invite) tools and integration with Yahoo! Maps. If you’re a hostzilla like me, you want to find just the right invitation design for your occasion and keep your eye on invitees that check your invite, but don’t RSVP (party foul). pingg makes it so easy to plan with some serious style!

With the Attach Large Files app, we are once again answering the call of our users to allow sharing of larger files. The folks at drop.io have built this app to allow users to easily upload and share files up to 100MB. They’ve taken collaboration to the next level by adding the ability to comment on files, a number to leave a voicemail for more context and a conference call number if you need to discuss further in real-time. Sometimes asynchronous collaboration is just not enough, right?

Today we are also releasing the Evite app that we demo’ed a couple of weeks ago. Now you can plan events with your friends and family from right within Yahoo! Mail. Start an Evite, make a list of potential partygoers using your Yahoo! Contacts address book and add it to your Calendar.

Finally, we continue to enhance our existing apps by adding features users have been asking for – like the ability to share photo sets in the flickr app. So if you already use apps, go check out the changes!

We are truly excited about what the future holds and we can’t wait to add even more apps for you to choose from! Stay tuned for more apps to further enhance your email experience and make you even more productive within Yahoo! Mail!

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