ON A YAHOO! TOOLBAR PROBLEM IN FIREFOX

S.O.S.

Thought I'd deal with a minor frustration that'd been building up the last few days with my Yahoo! Toolbar, which I've been a long-time user of on all my Windows and Mac PCs.

Over the last week or so, I noticed that the Firefox plug-in version of the Yahoo! Toolbar (latest version 1.4.1), was not displaying any buttons at all.  I'd go into Toolbar set-up and customize it with all the buttons of Yahoo! services I use, hit Finished, and then hit "Refresh" toolbar.

No joy...no Yahoo! buttons on the toolbar.  Totally blank.

Uninstalled the plug-in, closed Firefox, opened Firefox, re-installed the plug-in and again, nothing.

Again, went into the Toolbar set-up and added all my favorite buttons, and tried refresh again. 

Nothing.

Repeated this whole process on another Mac, and two Windows machines that I've been having the same problem on, with no happy results.

Considered that this might be a function of some other piece of software I'd installed on the first machine that was causing a potential conflict, and this frustrating effect.

But am having the same problem on all my computers, using both Windows and Macs, with the Yahoo! toolbar plug-in installed in Firefox, which is my primary, every-day browser.

Next, checked online to see if other people have had the same problem, and didn't find any conclusive suggestions or options.

One suggestion did crop up in a computing forum,  asking that I log-in to the toolbar again.

Unfortunately, the Firefox version of Yahoo! toolbar doesn't seem to have a "log-in" button or choice.  At least none that I could find after fifteen minutes of diligent search.  Since I'm already logged into other Yahoo! services like My Yahoo!, in the open Firefox window, I assume that I'm logged into the Toolbar automatically.

Next, decided to contact Yahoo! support, and started to fill out a lengthy form, that asked for my name, my Yahoo! ID, the version of toolbar I was using. 

Unfortunately, the answer to that question could only be input via a "pop-down" list of selections.  And the version numbers started at 5.x.

It then occurred to me that this support input field had been set up with the assumption that users would ONLY be having problems with the Microsoft IE version of the toolbar.

There were no options that I could find to report a problem with the Firefox version of the toolbar.

Not sure why Yahoo! wouldn't offer a way to automatically detect the Yahoo! software I was using, including version numbers, and input them in it's customer support reporting system.

So gave up trying to report this to Yahoo! and decided to write this post.

Thanks for indulging me so far.

Want to see if any suggestions come in via this route of sending out a general S.O.S. (save our software), instead.

In the meantime, I've turned off Yahoo! toolbar in all my Firefox browsers to re-claim valuable screen space on all my machines.

Comments

[Kristina]

Thanks for posting your fix Gary. I've switched back and forth between IE and Firefox several times because I need the Yahoo bookmarks and Yahoo's Firefox toolbar keeps letting me down. Very frustrating! Messed around based on your suggestions though and bookmarks are back! *phew*

[Jeremy]

My toolbar links are fine, but my email icon keeps telling me there is mail when there is none. It has been doing this for a few days. It is frustrating as hell to see you have email, go to check and find out there is none.