Does Yahoo Have an Outbox?

Although some might use the terms interchangeably, there's a big difference between the Sent box and an outbox. "PC Magazine" clearly defines an outbox as the folder that contains message not yet sent. The Sent box, as the name implies, contains messages that have already been sent. Typically, a message will go to the outbox when the writer of the message schedules it for later delivery or when he didn't have a proper connection to the Internet when he clicked "Send."

A quick glance at Yahoo Web mail shows that there's no outbox folder there. There are the common folders, such as Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash and Spam, but that's it. In the event that you try to send a message without a proper Internet connection, you'll get an error message simply stating that the message couldn't be sent. If you haven't closed your browser window, the message will have remained there as it was. Or, if you saved a draft of your message, there will also be a copy of it in the Drafts folder.

Something that might give the impression that Yahoo Web mail has an outbox is if you use an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook, to read Yahoo mail. The Microsoft Outlook platform does include an outbox, likely because it's a desktop mail client with which you can compose an email offline to send later once you're online. So, if you were to download your Yahoo mail via IMAP or POP to Microsoft Outlook or another client, and you saw a folder labeled "Outbox," that could give the impression that Yahoo has an outbox. However, in this instance, it's really the client that has the outbox, not Yahoo.

Mobile phones really have changed everything. In terms of a Yahoo outbox, here is where you can almost say that Yahoo has an outbox, particularly if you have an iOS or Android phone. On both of these platforms, an outbox will appear temporarily in your Yahoo mail account if a message failed to send, and it will remain there until you re-send or delete it. However, Yahoo makes it clear that the outbox is really a product of the device you're using -- such as Apple's iOS devices -- and not your Yahoo mail.