Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

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.

Happy emailing,
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

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.

Happy emailing
Andrew - Yahoo Mail Team

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…

Hope that helps.
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

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.

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

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.

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

For your viewing pleasure, check out this video featuring the chat feature in Yahoo! Mail. I for one, think it’s very cool.

Having trouble seeing the video on this blog? Click here to view it.

Reminds me a lot of the emoticoncert video from a while back.

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

Last week I told you about the “download all attachments” enhancement for the all-new Yahoo Mail. Well, that was just one of the new features of the all-new Yahoo Mail. This week it’s all about the Mac.

Some of you have probably already noticed that you no longer get the browser incompatibility warning when logging into the all-new mail. However, for those Mac users out there who are still using the classic version of Yahoo! Mail, there’s no better time to switch to the all new mail.

The rollout is complete, so everyone using Safari (please see my note about versions) should be able to use the all-new mail version.

So now a note about operating systems: Folks running the most recent update of Tiger (OS 10.4.11), as well as those using any version of Leopard (OS 10.5.x), will have a version of Safari that plays nice with the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Or maybe it’s a version of Safari that the All-New Mail plays nice with. Either way, they are friends now.

Oh – and for you Firefox users out there, there is also browser support for the Firefox 3 beta version.

Happy emailing (with Safari)!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

We’ve been listening to your feedback over these past months since the all-new mail came out of beta. One of the features that you asked for was a way to download multiple attachments at once. Well, we heard you loud and clear.

So, over the next few days we will be rolling this feature out. Here is a screenshot of how it will look in your message. So when you receive a message that contains more than one attachment, you’ll see this:

All you have to do is click “Download All” to get all at once!

(Note: Occasionally, you may not see the Download All link above a message with multiple attachments. Sometimes the manner in which an individual file is named prevents it from being grouped together with other files. In these cases, you’ll need to download attachments the old way, one by one.)

As with many of our enhancements to mail, not everyone gets the new feature at once. So if you don’t see the “Download All” link, be patient, everyone will have this feature soon.

** Please note… The download all feature will download all the files into one compressed (.zip) file which then needs to be unzipped in order to view all the files. Windows XP and Vista both deal with .zip files as part of the operating system. If you are having trouble with the “download all” feature, you may need to install Winzip or another file compression software.

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

I always like to end things on a high. That’s why I love being able to add a special signature at the end of my emails. Just a little something that’s all mine, with some contact details thrown in for good measure. You can do it too. Add a saying, a proverb, a phrase that sums you up. It’s up to you how you sign off.

It’s easy to do, just start by click on Options, then selecting Mail Options. Then from the list on the left click on Compose. In the centre of the page after “Signature:” select “Show a signature on all outgoing messages”. On the far right of the message window above the text area click either Plain Text (yawn) or Rich Text (cool and colourful stuff) before you start writing your signature in the text area. Finish off by clicking Save Changes.

There you go. Time for me to sign off.
Happy emailing!
Andrew - 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