Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

Today’s post comes from reader suggestion (who will have to remain anonymous, because I seem to have misplaced his email, ping, message from Facebook, LinkedIn etc.), who reminded me that, ‘with all of the fantastic new updates we’ve been releasing lately, like the new social features and Apps in Yahoo! Mail, we sometimes overlook the great features that have been around for ages.’ Features which make Yahoo! Mail the best (not just my opinion) email service around. One such feature is the ability to add an extra mail address to your Yahoo! Mail account.

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers…

What is it?
An extra mail address is a second Yahoo! email address that is linked to your existing Yahoo! Mail account. It’s another email address, just like your primary one, that you can use to send and receive mail from, while using the exact same Inbox you’re used to. You can even make it the default address that you send email from if you want.

Why do I want one?
I can think of a number of things that you could use the extra mail address for. Here’s just a couple:

• Let’s say you’re looking for a new job. If you originally signed up for a mail address like barry_manilow_fan@yahoo.com, you might think twice about putting that at the top of your resume. You can create an extra mail address that is more appropriate for a job search or other business correspondence.
• Maybe you just want to have a second email address. There’s a great deal of convenience in being able to check for new mail without having to login and out of two separate accounts.

Sounds good, how do I get one?
It’s easy to set up and start using. From your Yahoo! Mail account click ‘Options’ then ‘Mail Options’ in the upper-right part of your Mailbox. From the Mail Options screen click ‘Accounts’ then ‘Add or edit an Account’. At the bottom of the new window click the ‘Get Started’ link under ‘Extra Mail Address’.

That sounds easy, but I’m still not sure. What else?

• You can easily send from this extra email address by selecting it from the pull-down menu when you compose a new message.
• You can sign in to your Yahoo! Mail (or anywhere else on Yahoo!) using the extra email address with your existing password.
• You can even make the extra email address the default for sending new mail. Just set it as the default in the ‘Mail Accounts’ section of Mail Options.

I really hope you try out this feature. If you get stuck, or want to find out more information about extra email addresses in Yahoo! Mail, take a look at our help pages.

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Over the past nine months, we’ve made some significant updates to Yahoo! Mail, making it more productive, more social and helping people stay better connected to those who matter most – but we only provided access to these new capabilities to a small group of you as we ramped up the features. Today, I’m excited to say we are bringing new and dynamic social functionality, third-party apps, enhanced photo sharing plus many more new features to all of your inboxes worldwide…yep, all 300 million of you!

Here’s what we are rolling out starting today:

A Streamlined Design:
First, we’ve swept away some of the ‘clutter’ to give you more space for what matters most to you. You’ll notice that we’ve moved your Calendar and Notepad apps into a new area called Applications, beneath your folders. The Applications box also includes the third-party apps, like Edit Photos by Picnik, PayPal, My Photos by Xoopit and Big Sender by Zumo Drive, that we started testing back in December. These apps allow you to organize and share photos, be more creative and be more productive. Next month, we’ll be adding more apps including a new app from Evite to let you plan, create, and keep track of parties and events.

You may also notice, we’ve removed the ads from the left hand column of the new Mail. This gives you increased space to view and manage all of your folders and applications.

A Better Way to Attach and Share Photos:
We recognize that sharing photos is a big part of what you do in Mail. So we’re introducing a better way for you to attach photos (and other files of course). With our new attachment feature, you will be able to drag and drop photos into your emails, upload multiple attachments and even upload whole folders at once. You will also be able to view thumbnails and rotate your photo attachments before sending them to your friends and family.

In addition to this, we’ve increased the attachment limit from 10MB to 25MB. Now you can share more of your photos at once. Coupled with unlimited storage, this means you never have to worry about where to keep your photos. You can keep them in your Yahoo! Mail for as long as you like.

More Social Features:
Users of both Classic Yahoo! Mail and the New Mail interfaces can take advantage of the new social features on the updated ‘What’s New’ page. And with hundreds of millions of people starting to participate in this social email experience, it can really get interesting. You can now stay up-to-date on what friends and family are doing online, and view the most recent emails from your contacts. Soon you’ll even have the ability to receive birthday reminders.

We’ve been listening to your feedback and know that you love the updates on the ‘What’s new’ page. Of course you have complete control to choose what to share by managing your updates.

Now for the Timeline
As with all of our releases we want to make sure that people around the globe continue to have a reliable Mail experience, so we will gradually roll out features out over time. The first users will start seeing these new features today and we will continue to roll them out to all of our Mail users over the coming months.

For more information and to read about other exciting changes at Yahoo! check out these posts from Yodel Anecdotal and our colleagues on the Search Team and the Messenger Team.

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On top of the new contacts filter we introduced last week, we’ve been hard at work building new social and interactive features within Yahoo! Mail. As you might recall, we first started introducing these features back in December, and based on your feedback have continued to make enhancements throughout the year. Now we’re excited to share the latest social features coming to your Inbox, all focused on giving you a better email experience and making it even easier to keep in touch with those who matter most. Some highlights:

• Updates, Updates, Updates! You told us that you really like Yahoo! Updates, so we’ve added even more of your favorite sites. For example, when you update your Twitter (commonly known as ‘Tweets’) or write an answer on Yahoo! Answers, people you choose to share this with get updated. You also stay in the loop when others do the same. Of course, you can control which updates you share with folks by going to your Yahoo! Profile and selecting ‘manage my updates‘

  My personal favorite: now when you send an email to someone, you can see their latest Updates right on your Message Sent confirmation page.



• What’s The Status? The new Yahoo! status message located right at the top of the What’s New’ page of your Yahoo! Mail is an easy way to keep friends and family in the know with what you are doing, feeling, or thinking about. Yep, this is the same status message that appears on your Yahoo! Profile. We have just made it readily available for updating right in your Inbox. And if you are running out of things to say (as if that is ever possible) you can select from a list of handy, sometimes zany suggestions (what we call ’status-o-matique’). Just click on the inconspicuous ‘exclamation mark’ located in the status message box. :-)

  And stay tuned, you will start to see your friends’ status messages show up in additional places across Yahoo! as we incorporate Yahoo! Updates into more Yahoo! sites.



• News in Mail: Better than ever! We heard you loud and clear. You missed the tabbed format of news, so we’ve brought it back. To make it more interesting, we added a new category – Yahoo! Buzz – so you can see what current events people find most remarkable and have recently ‘buzzed’ up. For added good measure, some of you told us that you’d prefer to see the News above the Updates section. Now you can! At the bottom of your Updates section, simply click on the ‘More Actions’ menu and choose ‘Move Updates below Today section’. The News will then always appear above Updates when you log in.

These features are available for both Classic and new Yahoo! Mail users in the US and Australia starting today. If you already have created a Yahoo! Profile, you will automatically see the new features the next time you login to Yahoo! Mail. If you haven’t, simply click on profiles.yahoo.com, quickly create a profile, and presto, you will see these features in your inbox. And for those in other countries, stay tuned, as we’ll roll out these features to many of you shortly.

Of course, these features are best seen in action, and that’s why we reached out to a Yahoo! Mail user named Grady who will give you the scoop on all the new stuff. Take it away, Grady…

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These days many of you are engaged in an epic battle… separating the important emails from everything else. You get a lot of emails, some good (from friends, family, even favorite interests that you’ve added to your Address Book), and a lot of not-so-important emails (special offers, newsletters, emails you rarely read). All this has made your Inbox more work than fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply snap your fingers and poof! – your Inbox magically transformed to only show the important emails?

Well, we’re not magicians on the Mail team but we are rolling out a new feature that lets you filter your Inbox (or any folder) to just show the emails from senders you’ve added to your Address Book – with just the simple click of a button! It is a crazy easy way to let the “good guys” (important emails) win! Let me show you how it works.

Step 1: Go to your Inbox or any folder. Above the list of emails, you’ll see links to View from All, Contacts, or Connections.

Click on Contacts:

Like magic, your Inbox (or any folder) transforms to only show emails from Contacts you’ve currently added to your Address Book! No work required (who says all things good in life have to be difficult)? Now you can easily see just the emails from your friends, family, and favorite interests (I love U2 and added them to my Address Book) right up front, minus the noise and clutter. Of course, you can always create filters if you want even more control.

Please check it out and let us what you think! Thank you very much for continuing to use Yahoo! Mail.

PS: This feature will roll out in the next few weeks to both Classic and the new Yahoo! Mail users who have the Smarter Inbox features enabled. To get these new features, first create a Profile at profiles.yahoo.com and then log back into Yahoo! Mail. Only users in the US and Australia can get it now, but users from many more countries will be eligible soon.

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With Yahoo! Mail offering unlimited storage, I find myself using the delete button less and less these days. And with the ability to move messages to folders with one keystroke (in the all-new version of Mail), it’s more important than ever to be able to easily and quickly find messages.

Simple Searching
With just a simple keyword search, like “orders”, we give you the option to filter search results by a whole host of options. Whether you want to narrow your results by Date, Folder, Sender etc. they are all listed for you in a very nice, clickable, list (right-hand side in the new Mail, left-hand side of Classic Mail). But that just scratches the surface of what you can do.

Shortcuts
For the more advanced searchers of the world (plus those who prefer typing to clicking), you can filter your searches from directly within the search box. Think of the filters as little search shortcuts for your Mailbox.

Let’s take a look at an example:
Say you want to find all of your emails in your Mailbox with the subject pictures?
- In the search box, type: subject:pictures

But you have a ton of emails with pictures. You want to find that fantastic picture from Dave and you remember he called it cool.
- In the search box, type: subject:”cool picture” from:dave

On the other hand, if lot’s of people send you cool pics, but you’ve never really liked the ones that Dave sends you, you can hide Dave’s messages from the search results using the ‘-’ (dash) to omit his results
- In the search box, type: subject:”cool pictures” –from:dave

Attachments
Did you know that you can search for different types of attachments using search in Yahoo! Mail? And even better, you can search INSIDE attachments. Yes, that’s right, I said inside. I know what you’re saying – “That’s not possible from a web mail provider.” Well it is possible, and you can do search inside Word documents, Excel and PDFs with Yahoo! Mail. I’m not aware of any other free Web mail provider that does that!

Let’s use one of those shortcuts.
- In the search box, type: from:dave attachment:”restaurant list”

Why do I care about this? Well, since Dave sends so many emails with attachments to me, being able to search inside attachments I can find the document he sent me with his restaurant recommendations. And we even give a little preview and highlight the part of the document with the search terms.

More with 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. Want to see a list of boarding pass PDFs you have received from American after checking in?
- In the search box, type: from:american attachmenttype:pdf

Further reading
If any of this is slightly confusing or you want to learn more, we’ve created some tutorials. Tutorial topics include: Quick Searches, Searching for Messages, Narrowing Search Results. And there is a complete list of these Yahoo Mail search shortcuts in our help pages.

Now if only I could find my car keys…

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Back in January, Brandon Savage told you about the great new feature that integrates real-time Chat & Mobile Text from directly within Yahoo! Mail Classic. Back in January it was a sneak peak, but now more and more of you are now able to use this great feature.

What if I don’t feel like Chatting?
I’ve been reading and listening to all of your comments, and a common question is, “How can I turn chat off?” The answer of course is, “Easily”. Here’s how…

All you have to do is click the drop-down box and select “Sign out of Chat”. Once you do this you will be signed out of Yahoo! Chat and Mobile Text. That’s it – you’re done. And, the next time you sign into mail, we’ll remember your status and you won’t be logged back into Chat until you set your status back to “Available”.

What else can I do?
Don’t forget to check out the ‘Settings’ menu too.

From the settings menu, you can customize some of the Chat & Mobile Text features to suit your preferences. You can change whether a sound should be played when you get a new Chat. And you can even move it down so that it sits underneath your folders, if you’d like your folders to appear above the chat module.

I encourage everyone to try out this terrific new feature of Yahoo! Mail Classic. It’s already a very popular feature in the All-new Yahoo! Mail. I’m sure that once you start using it, you’ll ask yourself how you lived without it before.

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This week we have a guest blogger. So let me take a moment to introduce you to Rick Pal. Rick is the Senior Product Manager for our smarter, more social Yahoo! Mail. He’s got some exciting info to share about some changes to your smarter Inbox

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Hello everyone! As you may know, the Yahoo! Mail team has been pretty busy lately – adding Apps, strengthening our anti-spam, integrating IM into Classic Mail – and of course we’ve also been listening intently to you! Of course, not all of you have the new social features, but based on feedback from those that do, I’d like to talk about some upcoming changes we’re making.

You: Updates rock! Keep em coming.
Us: You might notice that your “Welcome” page in Yahoo! Mail has a new look and feel. For those using the social features in Yahoo! Mail, we’ve brought updates to the forefront and we now integrate non-Yahoo! sites directly in Updates — places you regularly visit such as YouTube, Blogger, Yelp, Picasa, and more. And there are many more Yahoo! sites now live, including Yahoo! Sport and Flickr. By adding more places to sites from which you can see Updates, we hope to make it easier for you to stay in the loop with the people that matter.

You: News over Connections Suggestions, please
Us: We’ve moved the entire connections module (invites, suggestions) to the right so you can continue to see the news and weather higher on the page.

You: I want to manage my connections inside of Mail
Us: We’re rolling out a brand new Address Book (what we’re now calling Yahoo! Contacts) that integrates contacts and connections (we’ll do a separate blog post on these features). The new Yahoo! Contacts will only be available to social users for now but it will be made available to all Mail users in the coming months. Stay tuned!

You: Holy Batman! I don’t want this thing!
Us: It is your Mail! Some of you just prefer the old welcome page and don’t want connections features. Here’s how to go back.

You: Holy Batman! I really want this thing!
Us: We are adding several new features that make it even easier to communicate and share before rolling it out to more users. Don’t have it yet? To get to the front of the line when we add more users, please create a profile.

Thanks again for all the helpful feedback.  And thank you for continuing to use Yahoo! Mail!

Rick Pal
Sr. Product Manager

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Seems like only yesterday Yahoo! Mail turned 10 years old. But as everyone knows online communication has been around for a little bit longer. The Yahoo! Mail team put together a video to celebrate 25 years of online communication.

For those of you, like me, who have been around long enough to remember all 25 years of it, this video will bring back some pretty good memories. For me it’s hanging out in my friend’s basement waiting the tape drive to load up the Olympic Decathlon game on his TRS-80 and playing Wizardry on my dad’s Apple IIe with that beautiful green screen (it’s still up there in his attic).

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Hello All – This week I want to take a moment to introduce you to Brandon Savage. Brandon is our Senior Product Manager for the Classic version of Yahoo! Mail. He’s got an exciting new feature to share with you. So take it away Brandon…

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I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “classic,” I think of a cherry red ’57 Corvette zipping down an open freeway… and about Yahoo! Mail Classic, of course.

It was with that beautiful ’57 Corvette racing through our minds that we designed the newest feature to hit Yahoo! Mail Classic: integrated chat and mobile texting, courtesy of our friends at Yahoo! Messenger. Zippy, real-time communication, without having to leave your Yahoo! Mail Classic inbox. With the addition of chat and mobile text, you can now choose the best way to communicate with friends who are online or on the go. It’s already a popular feature in the new Yahoo! Mail, so popular, in fact, that it seemed only right to give our dedicated Classic Mail users a smarter, more social Webmail experience, too.

Imagine this: the next time you sit down to compose an email to your sister reminding her that Mom’s birthday is TODAY, and that Mom is expecting a phone call, like, NOW, you notice that she is online, too. Instead of email, why not try chatting in real-time?

Or, for all you parents out there, ever tried to get in touch with your child while they were hanging out with their friends? Never fear, Yahoo! Mail is here – just send a mobile text right to their cell phone!

How does it work, you ask? Well, when you sign into your Yahoo! Mail Classic account, your Chat & Mobile Text contact list will appear on the left of your screen (you can place it above or below your personal folders, whichever you prefer). If your status says “Offline,” just click on it and select “Available” to sign in (fair warning to Yahoo! Messenger users: signing in here will log you out elsewhere). Once you do, you’ll see a list of all of your Contacts who are online and available to chat. We also show you the names of any Contacts with mobile phone numbers, for mobile texting, of course. Just click on a name to start a conversation!

Easy, right? But don’t take my word for it, go ahead and take this exciting new feature for a spin by sending a chat or mobile text message of your own. Chat and mobile text is rolling out to all Yahoo! Mail Classic users over the next couple of months, so cool your engines and please be patient if you don’t see it right away. We’ll get to you soon, I promise. Improving a classic takes time!

Brandon Savage,
Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Mail Classic

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If I could earn a nickel for how many times I’ve heard people say “I get WAY too much email!” I could retire soon. :) I’ve seen studies that show that users get 30 emails a day on average. That’s a lot of email to go through each day!

Let’s face it – messages from some people are more important than those from others. We would all rather read an email from our best friend than view a “special offer” from a Web site we bought something on years ago. New features coming to both our Classic and New versions of Yahoo ! Mail will make it easier to give important people VIP treatment in your inbox.

Of course, not everyone can be a VIP, so you have to invite people to become a connection (what we call VIPs). To do this, you send them an invitation to connect (they don’t even have to be using Yahoo ! Mail) and once they accept, new features are unlocked that only connections get. For starters, we make it super simple to see messages from connections right when you sign in on the Welcome Page and right in your inbox.

We also help you see what they are up to on other Web sites, like Yahoo ! TV, Travel and Music. For example, when they review the latest episode of “House,” review their favorite beach in Kauai , or rate the newest song from U2, you get automatically updated. We are calling this next generation of Yahoo ! Mail the “smarter inbox.” This video that shows the new stuff in action:

Connections will get even more VIP treatment in your inbox in the coming months. For example, we will allow you to share enormous files over email with your connections, and we’ll remind you when their birthdays are coming up. Those are just a few things… more on those features later. Connections will also get benefits across all Yahoo!, not just in Yahoo ! Mail.

These features in Yahoo ! Mail are now rolling out to users in Australia and some in the US – but coming everywhere soon. Users with Yahoo! profile will get access first, so create a profile at profile.yahoo.com to get to the head of the line!

Rick Pal
Yahoo! Mail Product Guy

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