Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

This might seem a little second nature to some of you, but based on some of the feedback we’ve been receiving, I wanted to take a minute to show you how you can quickly and easily sort messages based on a number of different criteria. 7 criteria to be exact.

Use the sort bar
You can use the handy sort bar to group and sort messages quickly and easily. Here’s what it looks like:

All you need to do to sort your messages is to click on the column heading with your mouse button. There are 7 columns to click if you want (which I’ve conveniently put red dots over), and here’s what they do:

1. Attachment – this groups all messages together that have attachments.
2. Read/Unread – this moves all unread emails to the top, and if you click it again, it moves them to the bottom (yes that’s what that ‘i’ means).
3. From – groups and orders alphabetically all your messages by the sender
4. Subject – groups and orders alphabetically by subject line
5. Date – sorts your messages by date (ascending or descending)
6. Size – sorts your messages by how big they are
7. Flag – groups all the messages you’ve flagged for follow up (what that means is for another post)

Ups and Downs, Ins and Outs
I’ve also heard through the grapevine, that sometimes people can’t see all the columns. So if you don’t see all the columns in the image above, you probably need to make a column or two a bit smaller. You can change the size of the “From”, “Subject” and “Date” columns by clicking and dragging the line in between the columns. Move your mouse over the column until it has two arrows then click and drag to resize. Just like this:

That other circle around the downward facing arrow shows you how the column is being sorted. If it’s facing down then it’s descending (that’s most recent to oldest or a to z). Click it once and it will sort ascending.

Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

Short and sweet this time… My colleague Dave just pointed me to another little “hidden” gem that can help you remember some of the great search features that exist in the Yahoo! Mail Beta.

Move your mouse over the “Go” button next the search field. Just like this:

Now press CTRL + click (hold down the CTRL key and click the left mouse button) and voila! I love it, and I’m sure you will too.

Have fun!!!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

Last week you’ll recall I walked you through a small sampling of what you can do with search in the Yahoo! Mail Beta. I only scratched the surface in that last post, so I thought I’d do a little more advanced tutorial here – but I promise there’s no exam at the end. I also promise a little “hidden” function at the end that will, I hope, make you say “cool”.

Searching Attachments
Did you know that you can search for attachments in the Yahoo! Mail Beta? And even better, you can search INSIDE attachments. Yes, that’s right, I said inside. “Come on now! That’s not possible from a web mail provider,” I hear you saying. Well it is possible, and you can do it with the Yahoo! Mail Beta. I’m not aware of any other free Web mail provider that does that!

Here’s how. Remember those shortcuts I talked about last week? Let’s use one of those to help us. I’ll use my friend and colleague Tim again. He’s always sending me attachments of one form or another. In the search box, I can type: from:tim@emailaddress attachment: “party invitation”. Why do I care about this? Well, since Tim sends me so many emails with attachments to me, this way I can find the document Tim sent me a while back via the term “party invitation” inside the attachment. You can substitute your keywords for the information you want to search.

Other ways to search attachments
There are plenty of other things you can do with the attachment shortcuts. You are able to search for an attachment name, type and number of attachments. Here’s a table for you that lists out the shortcuts.

Ok, so where’s the ‘hidden’ function?
Let me show you something that I think you’ll enjoy doing. Open up a message in your mailbox. At the top of the message, where the subject line is (in that purple header section), move your mouse over the subject line, hold down the CTRL key and click your mouse button.

That’s – CTRL and click over the subject line in a mail message. This automatically generates a search of your mailbox for all the mail with that subject. Go ahead, give it a try.

Happy searching (again)!!
Andrew – Yahoo Mail! Beta Team

OK, I promise this will be my last time to use a song lyric as a metaphor for a Blog title, but I find it fitting in this case. If you’re having difficulty finding things in your Mailbox, then read on.

Searching in Yahoo! Mail Beta
Using the handy search tool lets you find items quickly, especially if you have hundreds of items in your mailbox. It’s also a very powerful tool, but for right now I’m just going to go through the basics. For example, just type something into the search box above your folder list in the Yahoo! Mail Beta Window.

Yep it’s that easy to find a keyword, something in an attachment (more to come on that), or the header. But if you’re like me and you have hundreds of messages in your mailbox sometimes a keyword turns up too many results. What’s a person to do?

Shortcuts
Luckily, there are some handy shortcuts you can use to help find what you’re looking for. Let’s say I know who sent me the message I’m looking for. I can use the from: shortcut. For example, I type from:tim, and it will find all messages sent from Tim. I can also type in the full email address if I know it – from:tim@anyemailaddress.co.uk. There are other shortcuts too: from:, to: and subject:.

Need to get more specific? Then you just have to combine a keyword and a shortcut. Here’s an example: “search keywords” from:tim. Just notice that since I have two words separated by a space I have to use the quotation (“”) marks.

Saved Searches
And we help you even further by saving your searches in a list. So if you need to repeat a recent search, then just click the magnifying glass icon next to the search box, and look what you get…

Happy searching!!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Beta Team