Not too long ago, we celebrated the birthday of Yahoo! Mail. I still can’t believe that it’s already been 10 years. And as you read through that previous post, you’ll notice as time has passed, we’ve been improving and updating the Classic version of Yahoo! Mail in order to give you the best experience and most popular Web-mail in the world.
More changes on the way…
With the recent focus on all of the great features of the all-new Yahoo! Mail, quite a number of you have been asking “what’s the future of Yahoo! Mail Classic?”, and asking whether or not you’ll be forced to switch to the new version. Let me first say that we have no intention of retiring Yahoo! Mail Classic, and you will always have the choice of which version you want to use.
That being said, the Classic team has been working tirelessly to tune the technology behind Yahoo! Mail Classic as well as working on new features that will go a long way to - if I can use the term – ‘improve on a Classic’.
So what’s changing?
There’s a lot happening with Yahoo! Mail Classic. Some new features are being added, some changed and some removed. Over the years, we’ve been listening to your comments and what to you’ve been requesting as well as taking a look at some of the stuff you just don’t ever use. So I wanted to list here just some of the highlights that you’ll be seeing over the coming weeks:
- Auto-save to Draft - Yahoo! Mail Classic now automatically saves a copy of the message you’re working on in your Drafts folder in case you lose your internet connection or your computer malfunctions. - Simpler uploading and downloading attachments - In most cases, downloading now requires just one click!
- One-Click Flagging - The new Flag column (just one column to the right of the check-boxes) makes it super easy to flag messages.
- Folder Renaming - Rename and delete your personal folders directly within the folder view.
- More Intuitive Names - References to “Address Book” have been changed to “Contacts”, and your “Bulk” folder will instead be called “Spam” (since that’s what it is).
There’s even more than what I’ve listed here. For the full list of changes, check out the “What’s different…” page within the help pages of the new Classic version.
When will these changes happen?
To be honest, some of you may already be seeing these new Classic Mail features. But most of you will see these changes arrive in Classic over the next few weeks. You can tell if you’ve got the updates by looking at the image above. If you see the features outlined in red, then you have the updates.
As always, happy emailing!!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team
Wow!! Here in London the weather has definitely taken a change for the better. The latter half of the bank holiday was very nice and past couple of days have been real corkers.
Now that spring is here, maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning. And what better to clean up or freshen up than your Yahoo! Mail account. One way to do that would be to change your password. What better time to make your account more secure? No better time than the present.
While I’m at it, here are some more tips to help you be more secure when you’re online (and these apply for the whole of the Internet, not just Yahoo!):
1. PINs, Login Details, Banking Passwords, etc:
- Never write them down or share them with anyone.
- Never send them in replies to unsolicited emails claiming to be from your bank, EBay, even Yahoo! for that matter. Yahoo! and most other companies will never send you unsolicited emails asking you for any personal details.
2. Contact Details:
- Change your password immediately in the case that you think maybe someone has stolen your password.
- Make sure we have your current details, particularly your postal code and alternate email address. And make sure you know what they are too. We’ll need you to verify these should you ever have to ask to reset your password. All you need to do is select ‘My Account’ then the ‘Edit’ links next to ‘Member Information’ and ‘Address/Contact Information’ to review and amend your details.
These two things can reduce the risk of your personal information being compromised. Of course you can find more information and more tips to keep you safe online, in our security center.
We all get some unwelcome emails from time to time. You probably do what I do and just press delete, but sometimes you need a bit more muscle on your side to deal with them.
That’s where the Address Blocker comes in handy. It stops emails from addresses you don’t want to hear from. Just what you need? Then here’s how to do it.
All-new Yahoo! Mail users:
Click Options, then on the list on the left click Spam. Right in the middle of the page you’ll find a space in the “Blocked Addresses” section. All you’ve got to do is put any email addresses you don’t want to get mail from in here, then click Add. There you go. Told you it was easy. Here’s what it should look like:
Classic version of Yahoo! Mail users:
Click Options, then find the link for “Block Addresses“. Click the link for “Block Addresses” and enter any email addresses or domains you want to block. Then click Add Block. Just as easy for the classic mail users as the all-new mail users. Here’s what it looks like:
One of my colleagues in the states was on TV the other day talking about how to be safer and smarter online. Take a look at this video where Yahoo! Web Life Editor Heather Cabot offers up several security tips to keep your online experience and mailbox safer and more secure.
Yes, yes, yes - I know that it sounds very American in tone, but if you get beyond that, Heather talks about some very, very useful stuff in the interview. Oh - and FYI - even though Heather mentions the Addressguard being a feature of Mail Plus, all users with a @yahoo.co.uk account can take advantage of that feature free of charge.
Just last month I wrote about the auto-save feature of the all-new Yahoo! Mail. I think you’ll agree that is a great feature. Some emails went around the office just recently with a great tip for using the ‘save to draft feature’, that I didn’t even know existed.
This tip is great for anyone who sends the same form letter to a whole bunch of people. (Note to you spammers out there – stop reading) Saving an email message as a draft is an excellent way to keep a single template for form letters.
Here’s all you have to do:
Write your message, and click Save Draft to save it to your Drafts folder.
Now, when you’re ready to use it, click Drafts in the folder list, highlight the message and click ‘Edit Draft’ (or just double-click the message to open it).
With the message open, now you can add a new “To:” or “Cc:” address.
Ready to send it? IMPORTANT: Hold down the shift key and click Send. (If you don’t hold down the Shift key, the message is removed from your Drafts folder when you send it.)
There you have it. Now, if you go back to your Drafts folder, you’ll find that the message is still there just waiting for the next time you have to send it out.
Sorry, but this feature is only available to users of the all-new Yahoo! Mail. So if you’re using the Classic version of mail, and would like to try this feature out, you can always switch to the new mail.
Some of you are reporting that you are having difficulty sending email via SMTP. Our engineers are looking into the issue and will have a fix soon. But while you’re waiting, don’t fret, because I have 2 - yes two - work-arounds for you. (A work-around being tech-speak for an alternate way of doing something.)
1. The simplest way is to use the Web version of mail here: http://uk.mail.yahoo.com
2. Not so simple, but still effective is to change your outgoing SMTP port. Our help pages can tell you how, just click here to find the help page you need.
If you’re using Outlook - and it appears that the majority of you are - go to Tools -> E-mail Accounts -> View or Change existing email accounts -> Highlight the account and click change -> then look at this screenshot and make sure your settings match the ones below…
I’ve written some tips in the past to help you find emails in your Inbox easier. If you’re not a regular reader of the blog, and have missed my previous posts, you can read my search tips by clicking here.
Today I wanted to let you know of a feature that I’ve found particularly useful. Let’s say a friend emails you an invite for a drinks do at their place. You’re certain that they’ve sent you directions to their place before. In theory, you could go to the search box and type in their name to search for all the emails from them.
Instead of doing that, try this trick… While you’re reading their email, all you have to do is click on the email address or name at the top of the email, and Yahoo! Mail runs a search for all mail from that sender. All that with only one click. All of life should be that easy.
(If you use the classic version of Yahoo Mail, I’m sorry to report that this feature only works with the all-new Yahoo! Mail.)
As a Yahoo! Mail user you’re probably vaguely aware that Yahoo! does other stuff too. Lots of other stuff. Did you know that there are over half a billion people doing stuff on Yahoo! every month? I find that very difficult to get my head round…that’s even more people than you get at a Rolling Stones gig isn’t it?
So what on earth are they all doing? And, more importantly, why should I/you/we care?
We’re starting up a new monthly email newsletter which will answer those questions. We believe that the stuff people are doing on Yahoo! is potentially very interesting and that “yes!”, we should care, because we might just discover some wonderful new things for ourselves.
So, if you agreed to let Yahoo! send you email when you set up your account, you can now look forward to seeing some of the fantastic, creative ways people use Yahoo! every month. And don’t worry, we won’t be trawling Yahoo! for embarrassing pictures or hilarious spelling mistakes… we respect the privacy of all our users and will not show anything without permission from the person who created it.
What else?
Will I get Yahoo! By You?
If you want to check whether or not you agreed to let us send you emails, click here. You can set your preferences as you please but remember – we’ll only ever send you stuff that we think you’ll find genuinely useful and interesting.
How can I get involved?
We want individual users to star in every issue of Yahoo! By You. If you’ve got some interesting things to share, you can volunteer yourself. Click here to become a Yahoo! By You Star!
Tell us what you think…
It’s not called Yahoo! By You for nothing. We need to know exactly what you think about this newsletter. Please leave comments, suggestions, rants against this post. Look forward to hearing from you.
I wanted to share one more new feature of the all-new mail with you. It’s something that you may have noticed already, but if not I thought I’d let you know that it’s there. First, a question (not applicable to you Apple users)… How many times have you been working on that all-important document, and all of a sudden - ZAP - your computer crashes and you lose all of your hard work?
Well with the all-new Yahoo! Mail, you never have to worry about that with your Yahoo! emails. As you type and the minutes tick away, the all-new Yahoo! mail is working in the background to help make sure that power failures and other niggly computer problems don’t make you lose that important email you’re writing. Of course I’m talking about the “auto-save” feature, which saves a copy of your email to the Drafts folder at regular intervals. You can tell your message has been saved into your Drafts folder as pictured here:
Of course you can always use the “Save Draft” button at the top of your message if you want to save it to your drafts folder more frequently.
So if you didn’t have time to finish your message or if you just needed to step away from the computer, not to worry, we’ll save your message to your Drafts folder and you can continue it at your leisure. And in the event when your computer should crash (I’m sure you Apple users are laughing at us Windows users) we’ve got you covered with the Auto-save feature.
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- Simpler uploading and downloading attachments - In most cases, downloading now requires just one click!
As a Yahoo! Mail user you’re probably vaguely aware that Yahoo! does other stuff too. Lots of other stuff. Did you know that there are over half a billion people doing stuff on Yahoo! every month? I find that very difficult to get my head round…that’s even more people than you get at a Rolling Stones gig isn’t it? 