Use Filters to See Only Important Mail in Yahoo Mail

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This article describes how to use Yahoo Mail's star system to see only your important Yahoo Mail emails and not those that can wait until later. You may also sort messages by certain criteria to find important messages without sifting through hundreds of others.

How to Star an Email

The simplest way to let Yahoo know that a message is important is to manually star it using the Star icon next to the subject.

  1. Locate the message in your Inbox.

    Yahoo Mail inbox with no messages starred
  2. Select the Star icon to the left of the subject.

    Yahoo Mail inbox with the Star icon highlighted
  3. The icon turns orange.

    Yahoo Mail inbox with the icon next to a starred message highlighted

How to Find Important Yahoo Mail Emails

Use the Sort filters to find email messages. For example, sort to see unread messages and hide emails that you opened. Or, find an email with an attachment you need.

  1. Select the Sort drop-down arrow.

    Yahoo Mail inbox with the Sort menu highlighted
  2. Choose a sorting option from the list. Choices include:

    • Date: Newest on top: Newest emails show at the top of the list.
    • Date: Oldest on top: If you're looking for old emails or want to delete old messages, sort by date so that the old emails are shown first.
    • Unread MessagesSee all unread messages first, which might include emails you never opened or ones you marked as unread.
    • Starred: View starred messages ahead of other emails.
    Yahoo Mail inbox with sorting options highlighted
  3. Your inbox rearranges and lists messages based on the chosen method.

    Yahoo Mail sorted by starred

Yahoo Mail's Starred Category

Yahoo Mail also has a dedicated Starred category. This puts emails Yahoo deems as important into a special filter so that you can easily access those messages. It also automatically includes messages that you've starred.

Important Yahoo Mail messages might be those that involve people you emailed more than once or messages from people in your contact list.

Yahoo Mail with the Starred category highlighted

To open the Starred category, select Starred from the left panel of Yahoo Mail. This category is part of the main list, along with the Inbox, Sent, and other top mail categories.

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