In this post, we’ve got some more useful tricks for using your Yahoo account more efficiently and effectively. We’ll go over how to select all the messages in a folder at once (even if there are so many messages they take up multiple pages), tricks for searching for a specific email in your Yahoo Mail, and how to easily create a printer friendly version of a message (no ads or other nonsense).
How to select all messages in Yahoo, even on multiple pages
By the time you find a few minutes to organize your Yahoo email, you might already have hundreds upon hundreds of emails in your various folders. And when you have that many messages, they can’t all be displayed on one page – instead, Yahoo breaks them up into multiple pages. That means that if you wanted to select all 486 emails from a particular folder using the normal method, you’d have to click the “Select all” checkbox for each and every page that those messages are one. Yuck.
Fortunately, there’s a much faster way to do this using Yahoo’s “Search mail” feature.
At the top of your Yahoo Mail inbox, there is a search bar that you can use to search your mail. To the left of it is a small drop down menu that lets you choose which folder of your mail you want to search in. By default, this is set to “All”.
Let’s say I want to select all of the messages from my Inbox folder so I can move them somewhere else (Trash, Archive, etc.). I would click on the folder menu and select “Inbox”. Just select whichever folder you want to select all messages from.
Once you’ve selected the right folder, don’t type anything in the search bar, and just click “Search mail”.
You’ll see all the messages from your selected folder that can fit on one page. Now, obviously I only have 4 messages in my Inbox and I could have easily selected them all manually or just done the “Select all” checkbox at the top of my inbox. But if you have several pages of emails, doing this will only select “all” the emails on the first page, and you’d have to repeat it for every single page.
But with these search results, if you click the “Select all” checkbox, it actually selects ALL of the messages at once, no matter how many pages of emails there are. So simply click the top checkbox to select every email in the folder you chose, and then take whatever action you want with them (delete them, mark as spam, move to another folder, archive, etc.).
Tricks for searching your Yahoo Mail inbox
Yahoo Mail has some useful search operators that make it easier to find a specific email, even if you can’t remember the details about it. Most people don’t know about these email search tips, and they just blindly wander around their inbox until the find their desired message by pure luck or get tired of looking. But not you!
Let’s say I think I remember getting an email from my Grandma with a recipe that looked interesting. I think it was an Italian recipe that used parsley… or was it Italian parsley? Was it even Grandma who sent it? Where do we even begin?!
If I type the phrase “italian parsley” (including quotation marks) into the Yahoo Mail search bar and click search (if you really don’t know where to look, it’s probably best to have “All” selected for the folder), it will show me all emails I have received and sent that have the exact phrase, “Italian parsley” somewhere inside them. Search terms are not case sensitive, so it doesn’t matter if you use lowercase or uppercase letters.
By removing the quotations marks and just searching for italian parsley, Yahoo understands this to mean “Italian” and “parsley”, so this will bring up all emails that have both of these words somewhere in them.
If you want the search tool to use “or” instead of “and”, you can enter the search terms in parenthesis: (italian parsley) will give all messages that have either “Italian” or “parsley”.
But now that I’ve looked through all these messages, I realize that it wasn’t parsley at all. So I can enter (without quotations) “italian-parsley”; the – means “minus” in this case, so this will give me all messages that have the word “Italian” but only if they don’t have the word “parsley”.
Let’s try another approach. Maybe I’m pretty sure the email with the recipe I want had “recipe” in the subject of the message. I can search (without quotations) subject:recipe to return all emails with “recipe” in the subject line.
Ok, but if I have 1000 recipe emails from my Mom and I know she wasn’t the one who sent it, I can remove her messages from my search results using the same “minus sign” as before. subject:recipe -from:Mom will return all emails with “recipe” in the subject that didn’t come from Mom.
Now that I think of it, I am pretty sure that recipe was from Grandma. I’ll try checking all messages from:Grandma.
I can narrow that down a bit by searching only for recipe emails from Grandma with the search term from:Grandma subject:recipe.
And so on and so forth, you can combine these operators “and”, “or”, “not”, “subject”, “from” in any way you want to find the message you’re looking for.
Print an email in Yahoo Mail
Most of the time, if you try to print an email directly from your inbox, you’ll end up wasting a lot of ink and paper on whatever advertisements were there when you hit the print button. Luckily, Yahoo Mail has a super simple way to create an ad-free, printer-friendly version of an email.
First, open the message you want to print. Then, just hit the “P” button on your computer keyboard. A new window with the printer-friendly email will pop up.
Alternatively, you can click on the “More” menu inside the email and click on “Print”. The same popup window will appear.
Now you have 3 more tricks up your sleeve that will let you get the most out of your Yahoo account! You’re basically a Yahoo Mail pro now.
Yahoo Mail is a great email platform that’s quite intuitive and easy to navigate, and if you had enough time, I’m sure you could figure out how to do just about anything you want in your Yahoo account just by clicking around and doing some trial and error. But who has time for that?
To make your life easier, we’ve put together some of the most useful and popular tips for using your Yahoo account. Enjoy!
When you set up your Yahoo account, certain “safety features” were put in place in case you ever forgot your password. If you added a secondary email address to your Yahoo account, recovering your password and accessing your account will be easy. If you didn’t add a secondary email address, Yahoo should have asked you to choose and answer a couple security questions in order to prove you are really you and recover your account. Hopefully you remember the answers to these questions!
First, go to the Yahoo sign in page and click on “Need help?”
Now, click on “I don’t remember my password”.
This next screen will be slightly different depending on the information you provided when you set up your Yahoo account. If, like me, you added your mobile phone number, Yahoo’s first choice to recover your password is to text a code to your cell phone, since this is the most secure way to prove that you’re you. If you don’t have that phone number anymore, you’ll have to click on “I don’t have access to this phone” and try something else.
If you added a secondary email address, this is Yahoo’s second choice to recover your account. If for some reason you can’t get into that email address either, you’ll have to click on “I don’t have access to this email”, and pray that you set up security questions when you created your Yahoo account.
As you can see, I didn’t
There are limited options when it comes to recovering a lost or forgotten password, which is why it is so important to pick one that you won’t forget or write it down and keep it in a very safe place. On the other hand, it can’t be so easy that someone else can guess it and break into your personal account.
Help! What if I deleted an important message from Yahoo mail?
If you accidentally delete an important message and you haven’t emptied your trash folder, you can un-delete the message by moving it out of your trash folder.
If you have emptied your trash, or if the message just vanished into thin air, there is still a way to get it back as long as you act within the first 7 days of it being deleted. Here’s how:
First, go into your Yahoo inbox and hover over the gear icon, then click settings.
In the settings window, go to the Accounts section. We need to make sure you have POP enabled on your Yahoo email address, so click on your Yahoo email account to view/edit details.
Scroll down until you see the option for POP or Forwarding, and make sure POP is checked (you can only have one of these checked at a time).
Next, go back to the Accounts section and click on “Add another mailbox”. You can add another email address that you will be able to use to check your Yahoo mail. It can be Outlook, Gmail, etc.
Enter in the relevant information, give your other email account permission to sync with Yahoo when prompted, and give your account some time to sync. This is important because we’re going to request a restored copy of your Yahoo mail from, say, 24 hours ago, so if you don’t put the emails you received in the last 24 hours somewhere else, they will be gone forever.
Once your other email has synced with Ymail, you can download your existing messages into the other email account. Then, go back to your Yahoo inbox, go to the gear icon again and click “Help”. When the help popup shows up, click on the link at the bottom that says “Still need help?”
On the Yahoo help page, click the topic “Organize and restore emails”, then choose subtopic “Deleted email messages by mistake” or “Email is unexpectedly lost or missing”. They both will give you the option to “Restore Yahoo Mail” with a backup copy. Click on the “Restore Yahoo Mail” button.
On the help request form, select “Accidentally deleted messages on web Mail”, say when was the last time you saw the message(s) you need enter the captcha code and click “Create Request”. Yahoo will contact you and in most cases will be able to take your account back in time to before the message was lost or deleted so that you can get it back.
How do I set up my Yahoo email signature?
Many people like to add a signature to their email, especially if they use their Yahoo account for work. This is text that will be displayed at the bottom of every email you send in Yahoo automatically, unless you manually delete it.
Here’s how to create an email signature in Yahoo:
Go back to your “Settings” by using the gear icon in your inbox, and go to the “Accounts section” and select your Yahoo email address.
Scroll down until you find the “Signature” section, check the box to “append a signature to the emails you send”, and then use the box to enter the text you want for your signature. You can also use rich text formatting to change the font style, color, etc. Then click “Save”.
There you have it, the 3 most useful and popular tips for using your Yahoo account!
Don’t forget to check out our post, “Security Tips for Yahoo Mail” and stay tuned for another post on tricks that will let you get the most out of your Yahoo account.
With news of cyber attacks making headlines on a weekly basis these days, taking steps to make sure your online accounts are as secure as possible is more important than ever. There are several ways you can make your Yahoo account and email more secure, and considering how much of our lives and personal information can be found through our email accounts, it’s not a matter that should be taken lightly.
In this article, we’ll cover some ways you can keep your Yahoo account secure from hackers and other attacks, with step by step instructions on changing your password, setting up two-step verification, and signing in on shared or public computers.
Many times, hackers and scammers will try to trick you into giving your personal information to them via email. Here are some tips you can follow to avoid being a victim of these attacks:
If you receive an email from someone you don’t recognize, delete it and don’t click on any links or images that may be inside it.
If you receive an email from someone you do know but that looks suspicious, contact them some other way to see if they actually sent you the email or if their account was hacked. If they don’t remember sending any such email, delete it and don’t click on any links or images. They should change their password right away.
If you get an email that looks like it’s from a bank, government agency or other official entity, don’t give any personal information. If they request your login information, don’t click on any links inside the email – instead, type the web address of the bank, agency etc. directly into your web browser. If there are problems with your account, these agencies will usually use snail mail to deal with them, not email. You may want to contact the bank, agency, etc. about a potential “phishing” scam.
Don’t believe any email offering to pay you money after they receive an upfront payment from you.
Use common sense – if an email smells fishy to you, better safe than sorry.
How to change your Yahoo password
Ideally, passwords should be changed on a regular basis to keep your account secure. Most people are lax about their passwords and don’t follow this recommendation. However, if any suspicious activity shows up in your Yahoo account, such as your contacts reporting emails you didn’t send, or sign-in from strange locations, you need to change your password immediately. Here’s how:
Start by logging into your Yahoo account on a trusted computer (preferably a computer only you have access to) and going to your homepage. Click on your name in the upper right-hand corner to open a dropdown menu, and click on “Account Info”.
You will be taken to the Personal info tab, which includes your name, Yahoo ID, date of birth, and other personal information. To change your password, click on the next tab, labeled “Account security”.
For security purposes, you will be prompted to re-enter your Yahoo password. When you’re finished, click “Next”.
Next, click on “Change password”. Create a new, strong password and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the password change.
How to set up two-step verification for Yahoo
Two-step verification is a more secure way to login to your Yahoo account. In addition to entering your password, you will also have to enter a single-use code sent to your cell phone, meaning that even if a hacker got a hold of your Yahoo password, they wouldn’t be able to access your account unless they also had your cell phone in front of them.
To set up two-step verification for your Yahoo account, go to the same “Account security” tab described in the first section, and click on the switch button that says “Two-step verification”.
On the next screen, enter your cell phone number where you want all future verification codes to be sent each time you login to your Yahoo account. You can either have the initial verification code sent via SMS text message or phone call.
Enter the verification code you received into the appropriate box and click “Verify”.
Tips for using your Yahoo account on shared computers
Being able to access your Yahoo Mail and other account features from any computer is very convenient, but it also exposes you to increased risk. Not all computers have proper antivirus, anti-spyware and anti-malware programs installed and could be infected with harmful software. Some unscrupulous individuals place hardware or software keyloggers on public computers, which record every single key you hit on the keyboard, including usernames and passwords!
If you habitually use public or shared computers (which is any computer that can be accessed by someone other than you, including at work), you should periodically check the sign-in activity on your Yahoo account to see if it has been accessed in any strange locations.
To check recent activity, go to the “Account info” section again from the homepage menu, and select the third tab labeled “Recent activity”. It will list the locations and devices which have most recently been used to login to your Yahoo account. If you don’t recognize any of them, use a secure computer to change your password right away.
Finally, whenever you login on a shared computer, make sure you uncheck the box that says “Stay signed in”. When this box is unchecked, you will be logged out automatically when you close the browser so that others can’t sneak into your account.
Being able to format your emails has several benefits. It allows you to organize your text better, call attention to the most important things in your message, adapt for contacts who have difficulty reading certain fonts, insert useful links, and add a lot of personality.
Yahoo Mail has several formatting options that help you express your message beautifully. In this tutorial, we’ll go over how to use the most common of them: adding stationary, changing font style and size, adding bold and italics, changing font color, making lists, and inserting links. We’ll also talk about how to quickly remove all formatting and go to plain text.
How to edit format, font and other things in Yahoo Mail
The formatting options are automatically included in a menu at the bottom of every email you compose in Yahoo Mail. So to get started, all you have to do is go to your Yahoo inbox and click the “Compose” button, just as you would for any other email.
Enter the recipient(s) for your email, and subject if you want. Now, if you look at the bottom of the message box, you’ll see that there is a menu with many different formatting options.
Here is a close-up view of the formatting menu. In this tutorial we won’t be discussing indentation or text alignment because they aren’t commonly used for most people in email, but with a little trial and error you should be able to figure them out with no problem if you ever need to use them.
Whether you want to write your message first and then add formatting or do the formatting as you go is completely up to you. For illustration, I’ll write out my whole email first and then add formatting afterwards. Here’s the message with no added formatting.
One cute and unique feature in Yahoo Mail is the ability to add stationary, which turns your email into something really special with just a few clicks. To add stationary, just click on the first icon in the formatting menu after the attachment icon. This will open up a menu for you to choose the stationary that you want.
Browse the different categories and scroll through until you find one you like. If you don’t like any of them, just click anywhere outside the stationary menu to get out of it. I chose this festive stationary with balloons for my BBQ invitation.
How to format font in Yahoo Mail
Next, we’ll change the font style and size. These can both be changed using the second formatting button “Tt”. Select/highlight the text you want to change, and click on the button to open the font options menu. Then select the style and size that you want.
I chose “Classic” style and changed my font size to “Large”.
If you want to bold any text, the process is basically the same as in your word processer. Just select/highlight your desired text, and click on the “B” button.
For italics, same thing. Select the text you want to italicize, then click the “I” button.
Next up is font color. I would recommend to stick with normal black font for formal or business emails, but if you’re inviting people to a BBQ, why not add some fun color? To change the color of your text, highlight it and then click on the font color icon, which is right after the italics icon. Here you can choose the color of the font and the highlight color (you don’t have to use both).
I chose a dark pink that looked cheerful but also easy to read.
If you have a list of items in your email, it can be helpful to the reader if you set them off with bullet points or numbers. To do this, select the text of your list, and click on the lists icon. Then choose a bullet list or numbered list, whichever you feel is most appropriate.
How to add in-line links in Yahoo emails
Adding a link to your emails might not be something you do very often, but it’s nice to know how to do it so you have the option. Have you noticed when you read news online and they mention other news stories in the text of the article, and link to it without actually writing the web address? That’s an in-line link, and it looks cleaner than copy+pasting a URL into your email.
To insert a link, copy the text of your email you want to become the link, then click on the link icon.
This will open a window where you will enter the web address (URL) that you want your text to link to. When you’re done, click “OK”. That’s it!
You can also add smiley faces if you want
Here’s what our whole email looks like with all of the formatting we added.
If for some reason you want to get rid of all of the formatting at once, you can click on the “<<” button, which will convert your email to plain text.
If you hit this by accident, just click “Cancel”. If you really do want to delete all your formatting, click “OK”.
Now your email is plain text, and your formatting menu has disappeared. To get it back, click on the “>>” button, which switches back to rich text.
Your menu is back now, but as you can see, the formatting we had earlier was erased. Back to the drawing board!
Sometimes it’s more convenient to have a real-time conversation with someone instead of writing an email, waiting for a response, and then writing again. For these situations, you’ll want to take advantage of Yahoo Messenger, a chat app that comes built into your Yahoo Mail. It doesn’t require any additional sign up – you can access it directly from your inbox! In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to chat in Yahoo Messenger step by step.
Chatting in Yahoo Messenger
To get started chatting, login to your Yahoo account if you haven’t already done so and go to your Yahoo Mail inbox. In the upper left-hand corner is a menu bar with several icons. The second to last is a little smiley face icon; this smiley face is the “face” of Yahoo Messenger. To open the messenger, click on this icon.
This will open a little popup window where you will verify your name, which will be shown on your Yahoo Messenger profile to the people you chat with. After that, you’ll see a window which may have some of your Yahoo contacts listed as suggestions for who to chat with. You don’t have to choose from them. To start a new chat, just click on the little pencil icon in the corner.
This will open a new message window from the bottom of your screen. First, you’ll have to choose someone to send the message to. You can select from suggested contacts or enter someone’s email address manually in the “Add people by email or contact” box.
After you’ve added a contact to receive your chat message, you can type your message in the bottom portion where it says “Add a message”.
If you ever need to add someone else to the conversation, forming a group chat, just click on the “add contact” icon, and you’ll be taken back to the add contacts screen to enter the email address of the new person you want to add to the chat.
You can also edit various aspects of the chat by clicking on the “information” icon.
And that’s all there is to sending instant messages and chatting on Yahoo Messenger! You can send messages this way whether your contacts are currently online or not. If they aren’t, they’ll get your messages the next time the sign in.
One last thing: Yahoo Messenger is a great way for sharing high resolution photos that might be too large to send via email. There is a little “photo” icon in the box where you type your message. Clicking on it will let you browse for the pictures you want to share.
