How Come My Sent Emails Don't Show on Yahoo Mail?

By Irene A. Blake

A manual settings change can typically fix a non-working Yahoo Mail feature.
i Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Yahoo’s online Mail service provides users with a wide selection of convenient features designed to make email management simple and efficient. Users can archive, organize, retrieve and delete sent emails at any time as desired using one of these features. To understand why your sent emails aren’t showing, you need only to learn a bit about Yahoo Mail and its settings.

Sent Email Folder

Yahoo Mail offers users the option to save sent emails to a specific area called the “Sent” folder. Access to this area is through a text link located on the left sidebar of your Yahoo Mail account under the “Drafts” folder. Typically, unless Yahoo is having an issue on its end, emails don’t show up in this area because the Yahoo Mail setting designed to copy them to it is turned off.

Reasons

If you allowed someone access to your account, that person could have turned off the feature because he simply didn’t want you to read his sent emails. Additionally, someone could have hacked your account and turned off this feature to prevent you from seeing if your account was used to mass send unwanted mail to your address book contacts and others. Hackers often use other people's email accounts to send mail containing links to downloadable malicious software and bad websites.

Change Settings

Roll your cursor over the gear in your Yahoo Mail account and select “Mail Options” to access the main account settings. If Yahoo doesn’t automatically open the General settings section, click “General” in the Mail Options section on the left sidebar. To turn on the save sent mail feature, go to the Sending Messages section, click the box next to “Save a copy of the message in the Sent folder” and then click the “Save” button.

Hacked Accounts

If you suspect that someone hacked your Yahoo Mail account, make changes to protect yourself and report the hacker, if possible. Click the gear, select “Account Info,” sign in when prompted and change your password and security questions immediately. To report malicious spam, select the message, click the down arrow next to “Spam” and then select “Report Spam.” If you think the sender is a victim of hacking, select “Report a Hacked Account.”

Warnings

If the saved sent emails feature isn’t turned off and you suspect a glitch on Yahoo's end, contact Yahoo Customer Care (see Resources).

Information in this article applies to Yahoo Mail as of July 2013. It may vary slightly or significantly with other versions or products.

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