How To View/Post Yahoo Group Messages

by Larry Gorden, July 2007

How to View Messages.

There are two methods for viewing messages posted to the Yahoo group:

1.  View the messages from the Yahoo web site.

2.  Have Yahoo messages sent to your email inbox (click here for how).  This is my preferred method for viewing messages because I can see attachments and embedded photos, I don't have to log into the Yahoo web site, and it is much faster.  I seldom go to the Yahoo web site since all the messages show up in my email along with other email.  There are two common methods for viewing email:

(1) Login to your email provider with your internet browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, etc.) and view email with an interface provided by the email provider.  The email stays on the server, not on your local computer.

(2) Use an email client like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.   You can configure the email client to periodically download new email messages, making them available on your computer for quick viewing.  This is my preferred method; I have Outlook check for email every 3 minutes.

How to Post a Message.

There are two methods for posting a message:

1.  Post the message on the Yahoo web site.

2.  Post a message by sending an email addressed to "pontiac-1950s@yahoogroups.com".  See Yahoo Help for details.   Be sure to include a subject for the email.  This is my preferred method for posting messages because I don't have to login to the Yahoo site which is sloooow.  You can "Reply" to a Yahoo message email to automatically send to the correct address. 

How photos can be made available for viewing

There are several ways to make your photos available for viewing by other Yahoo members including (but not limited to):

1.  Save photos in a Yahoo album to make the photos viewable for all current and future Yahoo members.  To save photos in an album, first log into the Yahoo group, then click on "Photos".  You'll want to create a new album first and then add photos to that album.  You can later add more photos to the album or you can create another album and add photos to it.  Other members can then open your album from the Yahoo web site and view your photos.

2.  Embed or Attach photos in messages sent as email.  To do this, you must post the message via email (see above, How to Post a Message, #2).  You cannot attach or embed photos by posting a message on the Yahoo site.  Only Yahoo members that are currently viewing messages as email will see the attachments or embedded photos.  Yahoo members that are viewing messages from the Yahoo site will not see the attachments or embedded photos.

a.  Attaching photos is done through your email program.  If you are using Outlook, you can drag and drop a file into the email or you can click "Insert" / "File...".

b.  Embedding photos is also done through your email program.  An embedded photo is displayed in-line with your text.  The simplest method to embed a photo is to open the photo in your photo editing program, copy the photo to the clipboard (Edit/Copy or press Ctrl-C) and then paste from the clipboard into the message (Edit/Paste or press Ctrl-V).  Before copying the photo from your photo editing program, you may want to crop and resize the photo before copying/pasting into the email.  Cropping and resizing often should be done to reduce the size of the photo. 

Caution!  Some members are on slow dial-up internet connections, so it is important to make the photo as small as possible and still present the essence of the photo.  Do not attach or embed large photos!

How to View Attachments and Embedded Photos.

You must be receiving messages by email in order to see attachments and embedded photos.  You cannot see them when viewing messages from the Yahoo web site.  Attachments and embedded photos are stripped out before they are saved on the Yahoo site. 

To view an attachment in an email, you typically double-click on the attachment in your email program.  The attached photo then opens in your photo editing program.

To view an embedded photo in-line with text, you must NOT be viewing the email as "text only", you must be viewing it as HTML.  Your email program will likely have an option to view as "text only" and you must turn that option off to see photos embedded with the text.  Some email programs (including Outlook) will change the embedded photo to an attachment if you are viewing email as "text only".

Tip.

Try attaching and embedding photos and send them to yourself (your own email address) to see results.

Contact me if you have suggestions, questions, or need help.