How to change back the style of text on the new Yahoo Mail

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 9, 2013
Updated • Dec 19, 2013
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Yahoo rolled out a new mail interface yesterday that brought several Mail Plus features to free account users. That's a good thing for the most part, but with every update there are things that existing users do not like.

When it comes to Yahoo's update yesterday, they include missing mail tabs, the hidden folders, and a font style that is not pleasing to the eye.

While some things, like the missing tabs cannot be fixed right now, as there is no option to restore tabs to the site, others can be reverted back to their old state.

This guide looks at the options that you have to make those changes.

As far as tabs go, the only option that comes close is to middle-click emails in Yahoo, as they then open in a new browser tab. While that is not the same as using tabs in a single browser tab, it is the next best thing.

Yahoo Mail changes

yahoo mail inbox text style

First thing you may notice is the new text style used to display emails on Yahoo! Mail. All unread messages are displayed in bold, which makes them hard to read for some users. The emails are also squeezed in on the page, so that there is little room between emails on it. That's great if you need to display a lot of emails on the screen at the same time, not so much if you prefer the separators to be larger to improve readability.

Good news is, you can change the inbox text easily on Yahoo.

  1. Move your mouse cursor over the settings icon in the top right corner next to your Yahoo! username.
  2. Select Settings from the menu. This should open an overlay window that displays the preferences.
  3. Switch to Viewing email. Here you find two preferences that are responsible for the display of emails on Yahoo! Mail.
  4. The first is message list density. It is set to slim by default. You can change that to regular or relaxed to increase the room for each list item on the page. Note that this will have the consequence that you see less emails at once on the screen.
  5. The second is plain text font. It is set to modern and tiny by default. Change that to Classic and Small for example, or Classic Wide and Medium,or experiment with the other font types and sizes that are available here.
  6. Click on Save afterwards, and the inbox will be reloaded with the new settings.
yahoo mail change text style
Change text on Yahoo Mail

How it looks like after you have made those changes? Lets take a look at the screenshot below to find out. As I said previously, you can play around with the available settings until you find one that you can work with.

yahoo classic wide font
classic wide font

As far as folders go that are only displayed when you click on the folders link in the left menu, that too can be changed.

Go back to the same settings menu that you were in previously. Below the font settings, you find an option to switch to the basic version of mail.

When you select it, Yahoo will revert to the old Mail style where folders are displayed on the left automatically. It resembles the old style and will use font settings and styles of its own. What it does not add back though are tabs.

yahoo mail basic
yahoo mail basic

Update: You can get back tabs on Yahoo! Mail after all. What you need to do is switch back and forth between the basic and newest version of the interface until tabs are suddenly working again. You will recognize this when you see Inbox, Contacts and Calendar showing up in tabs in the basic version. When that happens, tabs are back and any click on an email will open it in a new tab in the interface.

You can change back to the new Yahoo! Mail at any time with a click on the link that is displayed in the interface.

Update 2: Tabs are back. Yahoo announced today that it is rolling out a tabbed interface option for all users of its Yahoo Mail email service.

Now Read: Access Yahoo Mail via Pop3 or IMAP for a better mail experience

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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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