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New Yahoo Mail: Wish I Liked It Better

Posted by: Rob Hof on September 14

Even more, I wish I could get to it. I was overjoyed a few weeks ago when I was accepted as a beta user on Yahoo’s new email service, which sports more flexible, desktop email-like features like dragging and dropping messages into folders. Now, it’s opening up to the general public, though as Liz Gannes at GigaOm points out, not very publicly. The folks at TechCrunch, as well as Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web, seem to like it.
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The last couple of days, though, I can’t log into the new service—that guy on the bouncing ball there, whom you can watch while you wait for the login to take, just keeps bouncing—so I’ve had to go back to the old one.

What’s funny is that I now find the old service a little less brittle than the new one, which despite its Ajax coolness had a considerable lag time to bring up messages or new folders at times, plus the scrolling through messages felt a little weird. Also, the new service didn’t let me control the look and feel as much. When I deleted a message, for instance, I’d get sent to the next message instead of back to my inbox, as I prefer, and I couldn’t find a way to change that. (Slight correction—I know there’s an option to do this, but it never worked on my beta version.)

I suspect I’ll stick with the new one, since it does have some advantages, and I assume it will gradually improve. That is, once I can get back into it.

Update: It’s working again! And despite my slight problems with it, the new service is definitely worth checking out.

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Reader Comments

solomonrex

October 2, 2006 02:43 PM

I switch to Gmail, because there are two things that the Yahoo! Mail Beta doesn't address (and probably never will).

1. Search/sort is broken. The mail search feature and the sorting feature based on keywords doesn't work. I have a Yahoo! folder, but Yahoo mail doesn't always get in there?!
2. Too much spam. I have a feeling that Yahoo just doesn't want to succeed at this. Even when I tag messages as spam, I keep receiving messages with nearly identical wording, and sometimes even from the same sender. This is even though I receive >300 messages in my "spam" folder already.

I have a feeling that Yahoo isn't on my side with these, and so this will never work properly. They're not processing their own emails the way I want to, and they're letting spam that is supposedly from Yahoo! get into my inbox, too. They just want to keep spammers going for business reasons. That's why I switched to Gmail, where tagging, search and spam filtering just work.

I have been with Yahoo since they started offering freemail.

BDD

October 9, 2006 12:33 PM

When composing an e-mail message with the new Yahoo mail system, when you select "To", "CC, or "BCC", I get an antiquated window and I find it hard to select addresses since it is sorted by first name and I must browse through all my address entries.

I'll be sticking to the old Yahoo mail and hope others complain about the lousy access to contacts when composing in the new Yahoo mail service.

Transformer

November 2, 2006 11:40 AM

I logged in and in 3 minutes ACCIDENTALLY deleted about 7 letters!

DJ Bazemore

November 8, 2006 01:49 PM

I agree that the spam button isn't really doing the trick. I also don't like the Contact Listing done by first name. If anything, you should be able to choose by first name or last name. Also, ever since the "big improvement", my little mail alert in the Taskbar has been telling me that I've got 133 new messages...when I've really only gotten 6 or 7. I can not for the life of me find how to actually complain to Yahoo about it. Everything is on a picklist and automated.

Alice Whittaker

December 16, 2006 07:45 AM

I found the yahoo beta much too messy to use. The print was bold or bolder & there seemed to be some doubt whether emails were sent or not.

The advertising is very irritating & the layout in small print is not clear, neither are the choices.

eventually a box offered a return to the original, which I thankfully clicked - only to find that was playing about as well.

I haven't been bothered by spam, probably because I use a public library computer (which has its own limitations).

Now back from a short holiday I'll try again.

It used to be so quick and efficient (sigh).
Best wishes,
Alice

Lola Orchard

January 13, 2007 05:38 PM

I hadn't been on the computer for 3 days, and when I logged into yahoo, today, I got quite a surprise. No mail. Now, I run 3 web sites and 5 business as well, and I need my mail. I have tried every thing to get it back and have had no luck. I want out of Beta and back to my regular yahoo where my mail is. Please tell me how to do this or since you were the ones to do it, YOU DO IT.I am really frustrated and extremely angry at the moment, so please take Beta off and return me to the regular yahoo so I can have my mail. Thanks

lora williamson

November 9, 2007 09:17 AM

Please put me back to the old email. because I can't get the hang of this new stuff and can't delete the email in my box.

PvG

May 20, 2008 08:21 AM

Is there anyway to SAVE "sort by date"(oldest at the top) settings rather the program DEFAULTING to newest at the top? This sucks!

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