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

No, Kate Middleton didn’t commit a fashion violation (is it just me or is her post wedding style flawless?).  The newest version of Yahoo! Mail is out of beta and ready for you!

We’ve got over 50 million users actively using the newest version of Yahoo! Mail and we want you to join them in this faster, safer, easier experience.  In the coming months you’ll be asked to upgrade to the latest version of Yahoo! Mail, but you don’t have to wait.

Simply go to http://overview.mail.yahoo.com to upgrade now and reap the benefits:

Faster: This version of Yahoo! Mail is 2x faster than our previous versions of Yahoo! Mail, even for those of you who have slower internet connections.

Safer: Yahoo! Mail blocks over 550 billion spam messages a month and our advanced SpamGuard technology  and anti-phishing platform have helped us reduce spam reports by 60 percent.  Here’s to a clean inbox!

Easier: Getting things done in Yahoo! Mail is even easier with features like rich photo slideshows, inline video viewing, chatting with Facebook friends, instantly responding to messages with the reply bar and tracking online purchases through the All My Purchases app.

We listened to your feedback over the last 7 months, fixing things and releasing new functionality every few months. And, we verified that 89% of users were able to complete key tasks before we removed the Beta label as well as links to the previous versions of Mail. We also put together these tips to help you during the migration process.

Finally, even though we’ve taken the Beta label off, we will continue to improve Yahoo! Mail.  There is a long list of features and functionality we’re tackling in the coming months.  We’ll continue to update you here on the blog, so please stay tuned.  In fact, it’s an awesome feeling to read your feedback, build something our users want, post about it on the blog and read that you guys love the improvements.  It motivates our team here even more, so thank you for that!

We’re constantly listening to your feedback, so  if you’re posting on Twitter, please use the hashtag #newyahoomail.

Read more »

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve begun emailing service announcements about an upgrade to Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail Beta has been in the wild for 5 months and we’re almost ready to take off the Beta label.

Here are some questions you might have about the service announcement email:

How can I tell if it’s a legitimate email from Yahoo! versus spam?
Please look for the Yahoo! icon to the left of the “From” field in your inbox. We mark messages with this icon so that you know that they are real messages from us.

What do I have to do to upgrade?
Either click on the “Upgrade Now” button in your service announcement or just go directly to http://features.mail.yahoo.com to upgrade. Upgrading takes only a few seconds and you’ll be in the newest version of Yahoo! Mail right away.

Do I have to wait for my turn to upgrade?
Absolutely not! You can upgrade right now by going to http://features.mail.yahoo.com

How long do I have until I need to upgrade?
We will be rolling out this newest version of Yahoo! Mail over the coming months and we’ll remind you along the way to upgrade.

Why should I upgrade?

• Here are some benefits of the newest version of Yahoo! Mail:
• Faster email
• Latest Yahoo! Mail spam-protection technology
• Easier-to-use design
• Unlimited email storage so that you can keep everything you want

To read more about the benefits of the newest version of Yahoo! Mail, please visit: http://features.mail.yahoo.com

For those of you who have been using Yahoo! Mail Beta, thank you for your fantastic feedback. We’ve been listening and will continue to release new features and fixes as we roll out this newest version of Yahoo! Mail everywhere!

Read more »

Greetings, Yahoo! Mail Beta users!

Some exciting updates to Yahoo! Mail Beta that we’re in the middle of rolling out:

“Hello, my name is Stephanie and I’m a Facebook addict.”
To all you fellow Facebook addicts out there, you might already know that we provide Facebook integration in our downloadable Messenger client. Now you can chat with your Facebook friends in Yahoo! Mail too! On the left, you’ll see “Facebook Friends” under “Online Contacts”. If you click on the thunderbolt, you will be prompted to authenticate on Facebook Connect (if you haven’t already). Once you’ve authenticated, your online Facebook friends will appear below “Online Contacts” and you can chat freely. As if Facebook was not addictive enough on its own, right? ;)

Giving you more message space
We’ve been hearing a lot of feedback from you about how much space the purple header takes up and how it limits how much of the actual message content you can see at once. We still want to provide some room to showcase our existing and future themes at the top of the page, but now you can scroll the entire Yahoo! Mail page so you can see as much message content as possible. Just go to Options>Mail Options and select “Scroll content of the entire page”.

Along with the ability to scroll the entire page comes another way to view your inbox. For those of you who are coming to the Beta from our Yahoo! Mail Classic product, we now have a paginated Inbox list view that might look familiar to you. You can view 50 messages in your list and click to go to the next, previous, first or last pages. When you click on a message subject line, we’ll load that message in a full tab. You can change the number of messages per page by clicking on Options>Mail Options and then selecting from 50, 100 or 200 messages at a time. If you still prefer the preview pane mode, you can also change this setting by going to Options>Mail Options and selecting “Scroll each panel on the page individually”. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Access to your past IM conversations
I don’t know about you, but my friends are always, always sending me important links, dates, addresses and other tidbits of information via IM. If you’re anything like me, you’re always, always forgetting exactly what was said/shared. What restaurant were we supposed to meet at? Where is that hilarious link Mike sent me about iPhone autocorrect fails? I rely heavily on my archived messages on the Messenger client and am so excited that we now give you access to your past IMs in Yahoo! Mail Beta. Just click on “Conversations” on the left side just below “Inbox” and see all your past IM conversations from Yahoo! Mail Beta (and the latest downloadable Messenger client).

Known issues with Yahoo! Mail Beta
We’re still working hard to iron out all the kinks in Yahoo! Mail Beta and there are a couple of hairy bugs that you’ve been telling us about on our suggestion board, blog, etc.:

• Randomly getting logged out of Yahoo! Mail Beta – we just fixed this issue, so please let us know if you are still seeing it.
• Attachment upload/download slowness and failure issues – we are aware of these issues and we will release fixes as soon as we possibly can. We’ll keep you up to date on this blog and our suggestions board. Thanks for your patience!

Thanks again for using Yahoo! Mail Beta and keep giving us feedback! For those of you wanting to try out Yahoo! Mail Beta, please visit http://features.mail.yahoo.com .

Read more »

To those of you who have been using our Yahoo! Mail Beta product: thank you. Your feedback on the Suggestions Board and on this blog has kept us busy fixing, building, and improving the experience. Thanks to your participation, we are launching a new batch of features that will go live this week for Yahoo! Mail Beta users around the world. Here is what you will see:

Color me excited!
Themes, themes, themes. We heard you loud and clear: you miss our colorful, fun themes! Our team buckled down in December to build and release a gallery of themes for you to choose from. Go to the Help drop-down menu at the top left of the page, select Themes and check out our gallery. What is your favorite theme color? My favorite is the dark pink, but I’m girlie like that :)

They’re baaaaack: Calendar and Notepad return
You love our Calendar and Notepad products and we’re glad you do. With this release, we are giving you easily accessible links to both Calendar and Notepad in the Applications section on the bottom left corner. Stay tuned as we integrate products like Calendar and Notepad more deeply into Mail.

Multi-attachment upload
Now you can upload multiple attachments at once. Just hold down your Ctrl, Shift or Command key and select all the files you want to attach.

More room for social
Finally, we have moved all your Updates to their own tab. This way, when you want to get your Yahoo!, Facebook and Twitter fix, you can go to the Updates tab and browse without interruption! I also like that my News is back in view on the What’s New tab.

We are continuing to update and improve the Yahoo! Mail Beta, so please keep using it and giving us feedback!

Read more »

Tired of spending countless hours on cleaning up those emails that have piled up over the years? Spring is just around the corner and you know what that means – spring cleaning. Don’t suffer from the stress and get a jump-start on spring cleaning with an organized Yahoo! Mail inbox.

We understand the drill. Make a New Years resolution, and then somehow, months go by, and it gets lost in the chaos of life. But if your resolution was to finally have an organized inbox free of all the clutter, then we can help you!

One of our Yahoo! Mail partners, OtherInbox, created the Automatic Organizer app found right in the handy Applications box on the lower left-hand corner of your inbox. This app allows you to keep your “clean inbox” resolution. Automatic Organizer prioritizes your Yahoo! inbox by automatically filing messages that aren’t from real people into pre-defined folders (Travel, Auto, Social Networking), while leaving you with a clean and clutter-free inbox manageable on your own schedule. Easy enough, right?

So try Automatic Organizer for free and feel good about spring cleaning for a change.

Read more »

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!

Read more »

As you may have seen, this week we announced the limited beta launch of applications in Yahoo ! Mail. This means that we are bringing your favorite Web sites and services right into your inbox. These applications will allow you to communicate, share and get more done within Yahoo ! Mail.

Over 60% of attachments in Yahoo ! Mail are photos, so I am especially excited about our new photo sharing applications. We’ve been working closely with Xoopit to make browsing and sharing photos from Yahoo ! Mail easy. Their application allows you to browse through all the Flickr, Picassa, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery and attachment photos you have, right in your inbox. I’ve had my Yahoo ! Mail account for over eight years, so when I activated the Xoopit application, I rediscovered and shared photos of my Halloween costume from 2002! (Madonna, circa the 80′s, in case you were wondering).

Here are the apps that our limited beta users are trying out now:

• Family Journal: build a family tree inside Yahoo ! Mail and easily share with relatives.
• Flickr: share Flickr photos with friends and family right from the inbox.
• Flixster: share movie show times, trailers and reviews instantly from the inbox.
• WordPress: post photos, links, and more from the inbox to a WordPress blog.
• Xoopit: see and share all the photos stored in email, including attachments and links to photo sharing sites, in one organized ‘photo view’ of the inbox.
• Yahoo ! Greetings and American Greetings: use the autocomplete email address feature to send an ecard seamlessly from Yahoo ! Mail.

We’re in limited beta right now, but please stay tuned as we start to give more of you access to these applications. You can sign up here to be on the waitlist.

Stephanie Shum
Sr. Product Manager

Read more »