How to Open a Free
Yahoo! Email Account
& Email Basics
Opening a Yahoo! Email Account
Yahoo! Email is one of the many types of free email systems out there.
This tutorial will teach you how to set up a Yahoo! email account.
Some other free email providers are gmail and hotmail.
With a free email account like Yahoo! you can log on to your email on
any computer that has internet access. This is great if you are
traveling.
By the end of this package, you will be able to:
Have an email address
Log In and Log Out of your email account
Create an email
Send an email
Reply to an email
Add and save an email address to Contacts (Yahoo!’s
address book)
Delete old emails
Created by the Revelstoke Adult Literacy Outreach Project (Nov. 2007)
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Table of Contents
1. Setting up an Email Account .............................................4
2. Signing In to Your Email...................................................11
3. How to Open an Email ..................................................... 13
4. How to Reply to an Email ................................................ 14
5. How to Add an Address to contacts................................. 16
6. How to create and send a new Email ............................... 17
7. How to Delete an Old Email ............................................. 18
8. How to Log Out of Yahoo!............................................... 19
Created by the Revelstoke Adult Literacy Outreach Project (Nov. 2007)
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Part A – GETTING AN EMAIL ADDRESS
1. Open up the Internet
2. Go to the the Yahoo! web site by typing in www.yahoo.ca
(don’t forget to hit the Enter key!)
You will see a screen that looks something like this:
3. Click on
Free mail: Sign Up
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A window like the one below will open which will ask you for some
information to get your account set up.
You must complete all the boxes before Yahoo! will give you an email
address.
If you don’t feel comfortable about giving out personal
information like your birthday, you can provide a fake date. (I
always make myself younger!).
Make sure you don’t change the date too much as if you forget
your password, Yahoo! will ask for your birthdate.
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Start with section 1 “Tell Us About Yourself”
1. Enter your first and last name in the boxes (click on the box
to do this). You can provide a fake name if you want, but your
friends might not recognize who the email is from!
2. Select your Gender by clicking on the arrow so that another
menu comes up.
3. Now comes the hard part: choosing your email address. Pick
something that will be easy to remember like your first and last
name.
2. Select an ID and password
1. Pick an ID name. This will be your email address. Make it
something that will be easy to remember (e.g. my address is
simone_palmer@yahoo.com)
Someone may already using the email address you want. If this is the
case, Yahoo! will suggest an email address.
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In the example, I tried to pick the address osadog@yahoo.com.
Yahoo! told me this address is not available and suggested a few
addresses that were available.
To pick a suggested name, just click on it.
Write down your email address now
_________________@yahoo.com
Next, you will have to enter a password. It has to be at least 6 letters
long.
Pick a password you will remember, but do not choose one that others
will easily guess (like your name).
My password is:_________________
Yahoo! will ask you to type your password in again. This is to make
sure you spelled it correctly.
Note: If you use capital letters or numbers, you will always have
to type your password exactly the same way.
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3. In Case You Forget Your Password
Yahoo! will ask you to answer a security question to help you if you
forgot your email address or password. (This is useful especially if
you are forgetful like me!)
1. Select the best question for you. (See example
2. Type the answer
4.Just a Couple More Details….
1. Say No to Junk Mail.
Yahoo! will try to send you junk mail (just like in your post
office box). To say NO , you will have to click the checkmark
next to Marketing Preferences. Make sure the checkmark
disappears.
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2. Now go to the Type the Code Shown box.
Type the funny letters written in the box. This is to ensure that a
person is filling out the form and not a machine.
In the example above, I would type AG7LDJ.
3. Click on the Do You Agree? Box. There should a checkmark
on this box.
4. Now click on the Create My Account button.
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You should see a screen like the one below.
Hit the Continue button
Yahoo! will ask you to take a tutorial on how its system works
Select Continue and go through the quick tutorial.
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Part B -Signing In To Your Yahoo! Email Box
Just like at a post office you need to know your box address. Each
time you want to use your email, you will have to unlock your box by
signing in.
1. Go to the Yahoo! web page (www.yahoo.com)
2. Select the Mail button on the top right hand corner.
You should see the following window.
1. Go to the Yahoo! ID box. Type in the first part of your email
address to just before the @ sign (Example: simone_palmer )
2. Type in your password in the box below
3. Hit the Sign In button or the Enter key
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Your Yahoo! Mailbox
Your mailbox looks like this:
B
To change to
Mail Classic
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mails are stored in the Inbox. There are two places to check for
emails. (see A and B)
On this page, Buffy has 1 new email.
If you don’t like the set up of this window, you can change to the mail
classic. I like the classic email because there is less stuff on the
screen.
To change to classic, go the top circled area and click on Classic.
To Open an Email
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1. Click where it says Inbox (see box B). A screen like the one
below should pop up.
2. Select (it should have a blue bar when you have selected it) and
double click on the Welcome to Yahoo! line.
3. Your email should open. (See next page for an example)
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Parts of an Email
This is the subject line. It
tells what your email is about
This is who the email is from.
This is who the email is to
(your address)
This is the body (where you
write your letter)
To Reply To An Email
1.Hit the Reply button. (see circle above)
2.You should see a window like the one on the next page.
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4. Hit Send
You will see the same screen each time you start the sign in
process.
TO SIGN IN TO YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT
1. Go to the Yahoo! web page. (www.yahoo.ca)
2. Click on the Mail button.
You should see a message that tells you that your message has been
sent.
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Adding an Email Address to Your Contacts
If the email address is one that you will send lots of messages to you
can add that person to Your Contacts. This is Yahoo!’s version of
an address book.
1. Click on the box next to the email address so that a checkmark
appears.
2. Click OK
Now when you type the person’s name, Yahoo! will automatically
fill in the address. This saves you from making mistakes
To access your address book, go to the Contacts folder
1. To add a new contact, enter the person’s first and last name into
the big boxes. (Example: I have entered Bruce Jones)
2. Add the email address
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Yahoo! will ask you to fill in all sorts of other
information, but you really only need the person’s
name and email address.
3. Hit Save
You have just added a new contact!
Creating and Sending a Brand New Email
1. Click on the New button
Send
This is the body of the email
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2. Enter the email address (e.g. jones.buffy@yahoo.com) in the
TO box. (c.c. means carbon copy. This is if you want to send
the message to another person.
3. Enter the title of your email in the Subject box . (E.g. Test
email)
4. Enter your message in the body.
5. Hit Send.
You should receive an email saying that your email was sent.
Deleting Old Emails
Yahoo! will save all your emails unless you tell it to delete them.
To Delete emails:
1. Select the email you want to delete by putting a checkmark next
to the email.
2. Hit Delete (trash can icon)
3. Yahoo! will send your message to the Trash can. (This is a
backup measure in case you didn’t really want to erase the
message. You can empty the Trash by clicking Empty)
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Logging Out of Yahoo!
When you are finished emailing, you should log out of your Yahoo!
account. This prevents other people from accessing your emails.
To Log Out
1. Select the Sign Out button.
You should see a message telling you that you have signed out.
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Congratulations! You have reached the end of Opening a Yahoo!
email account tutorial.
This session just showed you the basics of emailing. There are lots of
other great things you can do with email like:
Sending and receive pictures
Change the type colour and size
Use the spell check
Create a list of people you would like to send your email out to
Please ask your instructor if you would like help with any of these
things.
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