Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

A while back I mentioned that we had an issue that affected some of you retrieving your mail using a POP mail client like Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. Even though we fixed that issue some time ago, it prompted us to take a look to see if there was any room to improve the POP/SMTP performance as a whole. As I’m sure you are aware by now, our team is committed to improving the performance of Yahoo Mail.

I can tell you, that after doing a thorough check of our POP server’s performance here in Europe, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of an upgrade. And, if you’re a regular reader to the blog, you’ll remember we did a similar upgrade to our Webmail servers, which has dramatically improved performance across Yahoo Mail in the UK.

So, taking a page out of our own book, over the last month or so, we’ve been adding more hardware to improve the performance to our UK users that use an external mail client to access their mail. I can tell you now, that we’ve just completed installing brand-new hardware to process the mail that you send and receive. That means improved speed, fewer errors and an improved experience.

Take a look at the graph below starting at week 33 when the new hardware was installed. 100 is where we want to be (we’re not perfect yet as you can see at the end of week 35, but we’re getting there ;-)).

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

I love the click and drag functionality of the all-new mail. It makes moving messages a snap. But if reaching for your mouse is too tiring, have I got a tip for you. This tip is squarely aimed at all you efficiency freaks out there - you know who you are ;-). Before we begin, I have to give credit where credit is due… I pilfered this tip from my colleague Ryan from the States who writes the US Mail Blog.

This tip allows you to move messages to your folders just by using a single keystroke. Let’s say you have your folders set up like mine displayed here. If I want to move a message to my folder “Accts” all I have to do is highlight the message and type “1″ on my keyboard. If I get my BT statement and I want to move it to “Bills” all I have to do is press “2″. I can do that for up to my first 9 folders.

What’s more is that you can utilize the keyboard shortcut whether you are viewing your inbox, or whether you are reading the actual email. For example, if I’ve opened up my BT bill and have finished reading it, I just type “2″ and off it goes into my “Bills” folder.

If you want to re-arrange your folders in order of importance, or if you can’t remember what number goes with what folder name, you can always rename your 9 most important folders - putting a number in front - so that you are always reminded which folder goes with which number. I’ve done it to my folders here. One obvious advantage with this method is that you can bring important folders up to the top of the list because they are sorted alphabetically starting with numbers. (You can rename your folders by right-clicking on them)

Incidentally, this is just one of many keyboard shortcuts you can use in the all-new mail. For more keyboard shortcuts, you can visit this help page.

Happy message moving,
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team