Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

There’s nothing more annoying than losing an email. We do have a very powerful search engine in Yahoo! Mail but sometimes the phrase you’re searching on is so vague and general that you end up trawling through masses of messages, even after you’ve filtered your inbox with a search.

Our engineers have delivered a great solution to this. Now, when I type a term (”golf” in the example below), not only do I get the mass of messages matching that term in the inbox view but I also see a breakdown of all matching emails categorised by sender, folder, date, attachment type and message status.

Click this image to see a full-size version:

So now, if I’m looking for the photos my dad sent me from our last game of golf, I just type search for “golf”, then hop to the category box and look up emails from my dad as the sender. Or, I could choose only photo attachment types. Either way, I find what I’m looking for, double quick.

Happy email finding
Jon, Yahoo! Mail Team

OK - this is the second post for this feature (read the first one if you want). OK, it was there in the beta but we’ve beefed it up with a couple of key additions… best of which, you can now chat to people on Windows Live™ Messenger too.

What’s all this then?
We’ve integrated Yahoo! Messenger into New Yahoo! Mail. That means you can now have a live conversation with someone right from within your Yahoo! Mail mailbox. You can talk this way with anyone who has a Yahoo! or Windows Live™ Messenger ID. That’s almost everyone isn’t it?

Here’s how
When you log into your mailbox you’ll see, at the top of the window, a status message and a drop down arrow. When you click that icon, here’s what you’re going to see…

Once you set yourself Available, your contact list will show all of your contacts that have set themselves Available too. From here, you can select anyone on that list and start a conversation with them right from the comfort of your own Mailbox window. Here’s what it’s going to look like when you’re engrossed in a conversation with one of your friends:

Or, like this, or this…
We’ve added a couple of other new ways to start a chat. Yahoo! Mail is more than just email these days, so if you click on the arrow next to the New button (top left) you can choose “Chat” to open a chat window and go from there. Or, if you want to be really flash, you can use the keyboard shortcut. Just hit “c” and you’re off.

Not up for a chat?
As always, you can always turn this feature off too. I’ve posted about how to do that.
Happy chatting!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

The standard Yahoo! Mail interface was grey (sorry, chrome) – smart, slick and professional. But it’s Autumn now and it’s grey enough outside so we thought: let’s have a bit of colour!

Now you can choose from one of six colours for your inbox. It’s one of the things people have been asking for ever since we launched new Yahoo! Mail Beta and we’re really pleased with the results. Hope you are too.

Here’s how to splash about some colour:

1. Click on the Options menu (top right, next to Help)
2. Roll over the Colours selection
3. Make your choice
4. Try out the other five (optional)

Enjoy.

Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team