Download email attachments in Yahoo Mail

The previous tutorial explained how to send email attachments from Yahoo Mail. But you can of course also receive email attachments in your Yahoo Mail account, and this tutorial will explain how to download attachments from your Yahoo Mail account checked from a web browser. Like other webmail services, Yahoo Mail will also scan your email attachment files for viruses before its let's you download them. You will also learn the difference between opening attachments from their current location as opposed to saving them and then opening them from your computer.

Download an email attachment from Yahoo Mail

Follow these steps to download a file someone emailed you:

• First, log into your Yahoo Mail account
• Locate the email which contains the attachment you want to download
• Click on the email, and look at the reading pane: you will see a blue clickable link for each file attached to that email, as shown on this screenshot:
  
  
• Click on the attachment link, and Yahoo Mail will scan the file for any virus
• If the file is safe to download, Yahoo will display a "No Viruses Detected" message
• Click on the "Download Attachment" button, and Yahoo Mail will show you a file download dialog: do not click on the "Open" button, click instead on the "Save" button to create a copy of the attached file on your computer.
  
  
• Once you have saved and the email attachment on your desktop (for example), you can minimize all your windows and double-click on the attachment to open it.
• Now the file is still both attached to the Yahoo Mail email, and the saved as the copy on your computer. If you decide to edit the file and make changes to it, the changes will be saved to the copy of the fun you save on your computer.
• Now you can yourself email the file back as an attachment with all the changes you made. (If you had chosen Open instead of Save, all changes made to the file attachment would have been lost! This is why you need to save an attachment before editing it.)

Quick safety and security tip when downloading email attachments from Yahoo Mail

While Yahoo Mail will scan your email attachments for viruses, is still safer to have your own antivirus software installed on your computer. Even if a file is scanned as safe and free from virus, you should only download email attachments from people you know, but also only download files you expected to receive by email. You can always email your contact back and ask for confirmation that he or she did mean to email you that file attachment.

And that's it! This is all it takes to download email attachments from your Yahoo Mail account.