Manage Yahoo! Mail

Manage Yahoo! Mail

Take control of your mail by creating folders and filters for incoming messages.

Imagine you've just returned from vacation to find hundreds of messages waiting for you in your Inbox. Wouldn't it be nice to have an administrative assistant to sort that mail into categories and separate the good stuff from the junk? By setting up some folders and filters, you can let Yahoo! play the role of assistant, keeping your incoming mail as organized as possible.

As in any email client, the folders in Yahoo! Mail are simply a way to organize several emails into a group. There are five built-in folders that you can't remove:

Inbox

By default, all incoming mail, except messages marked as spam, arrives in this folder.

Drafts

Any email that you have partially completed and saved for later can be found in this folder. You can also use drafts as a message template for form letters that you send frequently.

Sent

This folder holds a copy of every email you've sent. This folder is enabled by default, but you can disable it by choosing Mail Options General Preferences, unchecking the box labeled "Save your sent messages in the Sent Items folder," and clicking Save.

Bulk

Email that has been labeled as spam by Yahoo! Mail will arrive in this folder instead of your in Inbox. You can clear the email in this folder at any time by clicking the [Empty] link next to the folder listing, or have Yahoo! automatically delete anything through a setting in Mail Options.

Trash

Deleted mail goes to this folder and is subject to permanent deletion at any time. As with the Bulk folder, you can manually clear this folder at any time by clicking the [Empty] link next to this folder in the folder listing.

You can also create your own folders and give them your own names. Figure shows the built-in folders and two custom folders.

Yahoo! Mail folders

Sorting with Filters

By using a combination of custom mail folders and message filters, you can let Yahoo! Mail do some sorting for you before you ever get to your Inbox. Message filters are simple rules that tell Yahoo! where to place an incoming email if it meets certain criteria that you specify.

For example, many emails from services or mailing lists use a predictable subject line. If you're a member of the photo-sharing site Flickr, all messages from the service include the text [Flickr] in the subject line. Knowing this, you can create a custom folder for Flickr messages and set a custom filter so that the messages won't appear with your regular Inbox mail. Any folder with unread mail will be bold in your list of folders, so even though filtered mail won't show up in your Inbox, you won't miss new mail as it arrives.

To set this up, add a new folder from your list of folders by clicking the Add link and giving it an appropriate title, such as Flickr. You should instantly see a new folder called Flickr in your list of folders. Choose Mail Options Filters to go to the Filters page. Click the Add button to bring up the Add Message Filter shown in Figure.

Adding a Yahoo! Mail message filter

Give the filter a descriptive title; in this case, Flickr will work. Because the subject line is the predictable part, add the text [Flickr] to the Subject: field in the form. Finally, tell Yahoo! to move the mail to the folder you just created by choosing it from the drop-down list of your folders. Click Add Filter, and Yahoo! Mail will start automatically moving messages that contain [Flickr] in the subject line into the Flickr folder.

Keep in mind that the more specific you can be when creating a filter, the more accurate it will be. If you set a Flickr filter to look for both [Flickr] in the subject line and flickr.com in the From: header, you'll be sure that forwarded messages from friends with the [Flickr] subject heading won't be filtered into the wrong place.

Adding just a single folder and filter for each mailing list you receive can dramatically streamline your Inbox. As you can see, you can also add filters for specific people or specific text within a message. All of your filters are managed from the Filters page at Mail Options Filters, where you can put the filters into an order of priority. For example, maybe you want any messages from bob@example.com to go into your Bobfolder, but you want messages from Bob via a mailing list you're both on to go into the list folder instead. You could simply make the mailing list filter higher in priority than the Bob filter.

Managing Spam

Unsolicited email is a fact of life for anyone with an email account, and no one has yet come up with a way to stop it completely. But there are some steps you can take to help control the number of junk mails you receive.

Use SpamGuard.

Yahoo!'s spam-stopping service is called SpamGuard, and it's enabled by default when you create an account. As long as it's enabled, Yahoo! will scan every incoming message for signs that it is spam. If Yahoo! thinks the message is spam, the email will be routed to the built-in Bulk folder instead of your Inbox folder.

You can choose how long messages will stay in the Bulk folder before they're deleted. Just go to Mail Options Spam Protection and choose a time, from immediate deletion to one monthgiving you the option to scan the Bulk folder periodically to make sure you're not missing good email.

Of course if you're a glutton for punishment, you can disable SpamGuard at any time by clicking the Turn SpamGuard OFF link on that same page.

For the spam that slips through the first line of defense, you can report individual messages as spam to Yahoo!. From your Inbox folderor any of your custom foldersclick the box next to any email that is spam. Then, with the unsolicited messages highlighted, click the Spam button. This will report the emails to Yahoo! and move the messages to your Bulk folder.

Block specific addresses or domains.

If a specific email sender is getting on your nerves, you can block her manually. First, open the offending message and copy the email address in the From: line at the top of the message. Browse to Mail Options Block Addresses and paste the address into the Add Block field at the top of the page. Optionally, you can block an entire domain. Simply chop off the @ symbol and everything before it in the email address and put the domain (the part after the @ symbol) into the form instead. Once set, all future mail from the address or domain will automatically be routed to the Bulk folder. You can set up to 100 blocked email addresses or domains.

Use temporary addresses.

If you want to do business with a particular online shop, but you're worried that it might sell your email address to spammers, you can sign up with a temporary address. A temporary address is like an alias that you can use to sign up at online services and delete if you start receiving unwanted mail from them at any time.

If your standard Yahoo! Mail address is example@yahoo.com, you could create a temporary address, such as temp21-shop@yahoo.com, which a third party would never be able to trace to your original address.

Unfortunately, temporary addresses are available only as a feature of Yahoo! Mail Plus, which at the time of this writing is $20 per year.