Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

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.)

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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

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