It’s moving day: how to migrate to that new account
- Posted June 26th, 2008 at 6:03 pm by HuongT
- Categories: All-New Mail, Classic Mail, General, New Stuff, Tips & Tutorials
With so many of you snapping up shiny, new, ymail and rocketmail addresses over the last few days, I suspect at least a few of you will be wanting to actually use them.
As I mentioned earlier in the week, Yahoo! does not offer an option to merge multiple Yahoo! accounts together. Typically people opened secondary accounts because they wanted to separate different activities, not just to add email addresses, so it hasn’t really been an issue.
If an existing user is unhappy with their old ID, and prefers the newer ymail/rocketmail ID, we encourage migration to the new account (ultimately freeing up the older IDs for others down the line).
You are probably thinking to yourself “Migrate? How am I supposed to do that?” Well guess what, it’s actually pretty easy. As a Yahoo! Mail user you can have TrueSwitch do the dirty work. Think of them as a moving company for your email home. You provide some info and they pack up your stuff, move it, and even do the unpacking.
They’ll even give you the option of sending a personalized message to everyone in your address book, updating them on your new digs. Yahoo! Help provides wonderfully detailed breakdowns for Classic or All-New Mail, but if you prefer a jumbo side of pictures with your instructions … I have some for you!
First up you need to login to your new email account and go to the Options menu. Activate the Options dropdown (in either version of Mail) and select Mail Options. If you are using New Mail you can even jump a step ahead by choosing Import Contacts.
Once you get to the Options page you will want to select Address Book (Classic) or Contacts Options (New Mail). Once there you will see an option to Transfer Contacts to Yahoo!
Onto the security stuff. We don’t want people moving you without your permission, so even though you probably entered your password a few moments before, we ask for it again.
Then we want you to review some stuff from legal and grant permission for what’s going to happen.
Once you have agreed to the terms, you will be asked to provide your login credentials for your older account. If you take a closer look at the dropdown you will see that there are other options too (should you feel like moving any other accounts over to the new ymail home).
Steps 2 and 3 give you options for which content to move, as well as if you want to notify your contacts of the new address. Then agree to the Terms of Service and Start Transfer!
After the fancy bar lights up for a few seconds you receive the congratulatory message. Be sure to remember that the move will take place over the next 24 hours, so if you don’t see it when you login again don’t be worried. You’ll get a message letting you know once everything is done.
Hope this helps make the transition a little easier!
Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail
Charity auctions for select ymail & rocketmail addresses
- Posted June 25th, 2008 at 4:08 pm by HuongT
- Categories: All-New Mail, Classic Mail, General, New Stuff
If you were thinking about moving to one of the ymail or rocketmail addresses, but simply couldn’t decide which address to pick, you are in luck. The Yahoo! Mail team, along with help from the folks from eBay’s Giving Works team, are auctioning off select ymail and rocketmail IDs for charity.
Not only do the proceeds go to charity, but you get the added benefit of making a statement with every email you send. Maybe you’d like to be pinkribbon at ymail or rocketmail to show support for breast cancer research. How about supporting the World Wildlife Fund by opting for oceanadvocate? As an added bonus, each account will come with 5 years of Mail Plus (that’s a $100 value). There are lots to choose from, so check them out!
Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail
Answering some questions about new email domains
- Posted June 24th, 2008 at 2:15 pm by HuongT
- Categories: All-New Mail, Classic Mail, General, New Stuff
It’s great to see that so many of you have taken an interest in the new, alternate domain, IDs, but I also see that there are a lot of you with questions. I thought it might be a good idea to try and address a few of the more common ones in a post. So here goes…
Does this mean all Yahoo! users will have to enter their full address when signing in?
If you create a Yahoo! ID with one of the new domains you will use the full email address whenever you sign-in to anything Yahoo! If you have an ID connected to the yahoo.com domain you can sign-in either way. That means you can use only the portion to the left of the @ symbol, or the whole email address. Totally up to you (and actually how it’s always worked).
Can I merge my new account with my @yahoo.com account?
Unfortunately not. Merging has never been an option for Yahoo! accounts, however we respect that many existing users may find this desirable with the addition of these new email addresses. We are encouraging users who wish to use the newer email address to migrate activity from the older account to the newer one, and we are also examining how we can address this on our side without ending up right back where we were (with all the “cool” IDs taken), because existing users snatched them up as secondary or thirdary tertiary IDs. It’s a balancing act, and we are working on where the balance should be.
Can I add a ymail or rocketmail address/alias to my account?
Nope, these domains are only for use with new accounts (see above 
). But you can create a yahoo.com alias for a ymail/rocketmail account. Which leads us to the obvious next question…
If I close my yahoo.com account, can I add that ID as an alias/profile on my new account?
In theory, yes. In practice, it’s a gamble. We can’t promise when an ID will be released back into the wild. So deleting your old account should make that address available for use again, but it will be up to you to keep an eye out for it.
Do the POP/SMTP settings change if you are on one of the new domains?
Nope, the server settings will still reflect yahoo.com, regardless of the domain used in your new ID.
I registered using the new domain(s) but now I can’t access the new account(s)?
We underestimated the number of existing users who would rush out to register new accounts for themselves (and in many cases several accounts for family and friends), and some of them were snagged in a few our fraud prevention nets. We’ve made adjustments to those nets, and have also reactivated any impacted accounts.
Yahoo! Groups is making me create yet another profile, why?
This one hasn’t been coming up here, but I’ve seen it elsewhere so it’s worth giving you a heads up. Groups users, that try to use the new IDs, will find that they have to create a public ID because their actual ID isn’t allowed. Can’t use the front half of your ID because it’s already taken by a yahoo.com user. Can’t use your full ID because it’s also an email address. So you’ll have to pick another ID. It’s a bit confusing, but I wanted to let you know that the Groups team is looking into how to make this process clearer.
Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail