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

Our Yahoo! Mail team is committed to providing a best-in-class mail experience to our users. Sending, receiving and attaching your files and photos should always work flawlessly, and almost all of the time it does. But when you have over 300 million mailboxes, every once in a while something might not work quite right. So what do you do if you ever experience an issue with your Yahoo! Mail account?

Well, if you are a Yahoo! Mail user in the UK, you can now get instant support from our top-class customer care team. We are now offering Live Chat Support to all of our Yahoo! Mail users in the UK and Ireland. Just visit our help pages and click on ‘Contact Us’. You will see an opt ion to chat with us live now. Just click that button and you will be connected directly to one of our chat support agents.

Live chat support is available 8am-8pm / 7 days a week, and is just one click away. We are excited to offer you this service, which I think you’ll find is unique among our competitors.

Read more »

Disposable Email Addresses in Yahoo! Mail (you might also know them as Addressguard) are a great way to help keep your Inbox free from spam. They are email addresses that you create and give out if you don’t want to give out your primary email address. Messages to your disposable email addresses are delivered to your Inbox or a folder you choose, and you can simply delete them if they start to receive spam.

If you’re like me and you use Disposable Email Addresses in the fight against spam, then I want to let you know about some upcoming changes to your Disposable Email Addresses. First of all, you probably know to look for the Disposable Email Addresses in the Spam section of Yahoo! Mail Options (click the ‘Options’ link in the top of your Inbox and then click ‘More Options’ or ‘Mail Options’). Soon, we are giving ‘Disposable Email Addresses’ its very own place on the Mail Options Screen. Let’s have a look:

(Please note: If you don’t see ‘Disposable Email Addresses’ as an option in the left-hand menu, you will need to sign up from the ‘Spam’ section of Mail Options.) Creating a Disposable Email Address is really very easy. Just click the ‘Add Address’ button at the top of the screen and an easy to follow wizard will walk you through creating your Disposable Email Addresses.

There are a few other changes as well. So let’s walk through each of them:

1. Changes to ‘Spamguard’ settings: In the current version of Disposable Email Addresses – I’m going to abbreviate them to DEA’s now – you have the option of choosing whether you want to turn the ‘Spamguard’ setting on for each individual DEA. With the upcoming changes, all DEA’s will take the Spamguard setting that you have set up in the Spam section of your Yahoo! Mail Options. That means you have will have one global Spamguard setting for your entire Mailbox and you can control it from one central location. How’s that for easy?
2. Changes to the delivery options: Now, when you set up a DEA, you have an option to move messages addressed to your DEA to your Inbox or any personal folder that you’ve created. With the new DEA’s you can still do that, but now you will have to use a filter. After you create your DEA, just click the link ‘Manage Filters for Disposable Addresses’. That link will take you to the ‘Filters’ section of Yahoo! Mail Options. Create a new filter, then just put your newly created DEA in the ‘recipient’ field and select the folder you want it delivered to. (Please note: as a consequence of this change you will have to set up new filters for your current Disposable Email Addresses.)
3. Changes to the ‘Sending Mail’ option: Our current DEA creation lets you pick an option to send email from a DEA. With the new version of Disposable Email Addresses you will now have the option of sending mail from all of the DEA’s you create. When you compose a new mail, you can find all your DEA’s in the ‘From:’ pick-list.

These changes to your have already begun to roll-out to Yahoo! Mail Users. If you don’t see these changes in your Yahoo! Mail Options right now, they should be showing up soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

Read more »

Apps in Mail let you activate all sorts of additional features that enhance your experience …. Today I want to introduce you to Fontself, an application that allows you to add something special to your emails. To tell you all about it is Fernando Saturno, Director of Product for Fontself.
Enjoy, Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team
—-
We are really proud to announce that Fontself is now available in Yahoo! Mail. With the new Fontself application, now you can add a bit of color and style to your messages using a variety of original hand-drawn fonts and send eye-catching emails to your friends.

Just remembered it was your friend’s birthday? Want to let someone know how much you miss them? How about making the invite for your upcoming party a bit more memorable? Or even better, why not send a funky message to your friends just for fun?

With Fontself, you can always find a cool font that suits your mood and gives your email messages that very personal touch. Your personalized emails will not only stand out in a crowded inbox, but will surprise your friends and put a smile on their face.

Creating colorful emails using our original fonts is very easy. First, click on this link to take you to the Applications gallery where you can install the Fontself application. After, just launch the Fontself app from the Applications menu, select a font, type a message, click on “Create email” and voila! A new email gets created, and you can then add any other text or attachments to your illustrated message.

Be creative! Whether you are trying to impress your friends or getting your point across in a funny way, there are plenty of styles and colours to choose from in our growing library of free Fonts.

Below are samples from just of few of them:

Most of these fonts have their own set of smileys, so expect some interesting surprises to pop up as you type your messages. The whole list of smileys is here.

The Fontself application is currently available to all Yahoo! Mail UK users, and will be released in additional European countries very soon. And for those of you who are eager to start creating your own alphabets, we have some extra goodness coming your way soon… so, stay tuned!

Fernando Saturno – Fontself

Read more »

As you know, we are always listening to your feedback. Many of you that have small computer screens have told us that you would like more space to read your emails. You spoke and we listened.

To give you more real estate to read your emails, we are adding a button just to the left of the advertisement in the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Clicking that button will hide the ad temporarily, while you read your email.

This is a handy tool, especially if you are using a computer with a smaller screen resolution like a small laptop or netbook. While it doesn’t permanently remove ads, it will give you more space while you read an email. Ads are what allow us to provide you Yahoo! Mail as a free service and hopefully they’re sometimes useful and interesting too. If you would like permanently disable ads you can sign up for Mail Plus which offers an ad-free experience and other enhanced features.

Read more »

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!

Read more »

I have some really exciting changes to share about the all-new Yahoo! Calendar that are based on the feedback you’ve been sharing with us. Your top request on our Yahoo! Calendar suggestion board was to make the Calendar open as a tab in the All-New version of Yahoo! Mail. Well, your wish is our command, and over the coming weeks we will begin to roll this change out to everyone.

You can see what it looks like below, but first I want to show some changes that are coming very soon. In fact, you may have already noticed the change in your calendar. The left hand column with the month, search and the calendar list is now an expandable tab just underneath the ‘Today’ button. Now, when you click the calendar icon, the tab expands to show the search and all of your calendars.

One of the main reasons behind this change is to free up some space so the calendar will fit nicely and neatly inside a tab in the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Now when you need to go to your calendar you’ll never need to leave your Inbox. Here’s what it will look like when it’s open in Yahoo! Mail:

Of course that’s not the only reason to use love the new Yahoo! Calendar. Here are some other reasons to love it:

• Calendar sharing
• Syncing your calendar with your iPhone or iPod touch over the air
• Multiple calendars (or layers) that you can hide or display
• A new search tool that lets you search your Calendar and Notepad
• A handy ‘right click’ menu to quickly add events and more

So when’s all this happening? The change with the expandable tab is rolling out now and you should be seeing it in the next few days. Adding the Calendar to a tab in the All-New mail will be coming soon after. You have to be using the All New Calender to get all these great features, so if you have not already switched to the new Yahoo! Calendar, you can do that here: http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com

Read more »

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).

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

I am a firm believer in the old adage ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’. That is why my colleagues and I write a lot of posts around online security, phishing prevention and spam. We want everyone to know how to recognize and avoid phishing emails, as well as share tips for staying safe online.

But I also recognize that even the best of us can get caught off-guard sometimes. Whether it happens by mistake or a particularly well done forgery, someday you may find yourself in the situation that you account has been phished. If you don’t realize it right away, you’ll know it when your friends start asking why you sent them an email to a strange online shop or whether or not you really are stuck in Chicago without your wallet and are in need of money.

If you do ever find yourself the victim of a phishing attack and think your Yahoo account has been compromised, here are some things you can do to help get your account back online and in your control:

Change your password immediately. If you find that your account is sending spam, and you are still able to access your account, login to your Yahoo! account and change your password. That will prevent the fraudster from entering your account again. (Tip: Also check that we have the correct alternate contact email address for you on file.)

Use our automated account recovery tool. Sometimes the hacker who stole your information changes your password so that you can no longer access your account. If that’s the case, our account recovery tool can help restore access to your account and change your password at the same time. (Tip: You will have to answer your secret questions to complete the tool. If you forgot, or haven’t set your secret questions/answers, you can do that here then click the link ‘Update password-reset info’.)

Contact our Customer Care Team. If you can’t remember or are unable to provide the information needed by the account recovery tool, you can always contact our customer care team. Have a look at our account verification help pages, and then click the ‘Contact Us’ link. They will help get access to your account.

Remember, prevention is the best medicine. So arm yourself with the knowledge to stay safe online, and make sure you are prepared in case you ever do find yourself the victim of phishing. To simplify the process and quickly regain control of your Yahoo! account, make sure you always have a current alternate contact email address, and know the questions and answers to your secret questions. You can update your Yahoo! account recovery information by logging into your Yahoo! Account.

Read more »