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Get to know the contact search bar

June 5, 2007 on 7:50 am | In Features | 24 Comments

At the top of the Yahoo! Messenger window lurks an often overlooked, but handy piece of the interface: the contact search bar. Aptly named, it lets you quickly find a friend in your contact list and start a conversation with them, whether it’s over IM, email, SMS or voice. And even if someone’s not in your contact list or address book, you can just enter a Yahoo! ID, phone number or email to get started.

A handy shortcut for accessing the contact search bar is the Windows + Y keyboard shortcut (the Windows key is that one in the lower left that looks like a waving flag). No matter where you are on your computer, this will bring up the Messenger window with the cursor in the contact search bar. This even works when your Messenger window is closed.

When you type a friend’s name in the search bar, the available communication options will appear in a drop down menu below the bar. What’s available depends on what information you have stored for that friend in your address book. For example, if you have a friend’s mobile phone number, you can click to send an SMS message to their phone or click to call their mobile using Yahoo! Voice. Clicking “Send Email” will start a new email message to them in your computer’s default email program.

You can use the contact search bar to start a conversation with anyone, even if they’re not in your address book. I was searching for London hotels the other day and needed to call one of them. I wanted to use my low calling rate on Yahoo! Voice, so I copied the phone number from the hotel website, hit Windows +Y on my keyboard and pasted the number into the contact search bar. I then selected “Call Phone Number”. Ring, ring – I was connected.

And to do justice to the “search” part of its name, you can also start a web search from the bar. Just enter any term and click “Search the web” in the drop down menu. I did this by accident once when I typed in a friend’s name – I learned all kinds of new things about him!

The search bar also works within the Address Book view. Just switch modes from your contact list to address book by clicking the Address Book icon () above the bar, then start your search. When a friend’s contact info comes up, you can click to IM, call a phone number, SMS or email. The difference with the address book view is that the actual phone numbers, email addresses and Yahoo! IDs are visible, and you can click to access your friend’s full listing.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

24 Comments »

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  1. Im looking for friends on yahoo messenger.

    Comment by lydia — June 5, 2007 #

  2. how do i delete contents in contact bar

    Comment by Patrick — June 5, 2007 #

  3. Im new to yahoo messenger i need help

    Comment by lydia — June 5, 2007 #

  4. how can i help, just ask

    Comment by Patrick — June 5, 2007 #

  5. I like this both on the Windows and on the Mac version. Really helpful

    Comment by Lucky — June 5, 2007 #

  6. [...] more : Get to know the contact search bar email» id» sms» voice» Yahoo! Messenger» [...]

    Pingback by Contact Search / Yahoo! Messenger » Stealth Settings — June 5, 2007 #

  7. When I use Z Soft to uninstall Yahoo browser services it reflects zero programs on my harddrive is it just the backups I am removing of programs?

    Comment by Jim Vaglia — June 6, 2007 #

  8. I think the biggest question I’ve had people asking is HOW to remove the previously searched contents (HISTORY).

    Comment by Netti — June 6, 2007 #

  9. hey Sarah can you please tell me how do i get rid of that orange star next to my name (that has the link to yahoo 360)? i have the page and it’s fine, but i don’t want the orange star.. it makes unknown people (that have me in their contact list) see my yahoo 360 page, which displays personal info
    thanks

    Comment by irene — June 7, 2007 #

  10. Howcome no blog entries on this ?

    ===========================
    Critical Bugs Discovered In Yahoo! Messenger

    Yahoo is working on a patch for critical Yahoo Messenger vulnerabilities that could enable a remote hacker to take control of a user’s system. eEye Digital Security’s researchers found the bugs within the last few weeks and reported them to Yahoo on Wednesday, according to Marc Maiffret, co-founder and CTO of the security company. eEye’s researchers say there actually are multiple flaws in Version 8 of Yahoo’s instant messenger client software. Maiffret was careful not to give out too much information about the flaw until Yahoo can issue a patch for it.

    “We recently learned of a buffer overflow security issue in an ActiveX control. This control is part of the code for Web cam image upload and viewing. Upon learning of this issue, we began working towards a resolution and expect to have a fix shortly. This type of flaw is not going to be prevented by anti-virus. There’s no real protection for this type of flaw,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten. For the vulnerability to cause a problem, however, the user needs to take some kind of action.

    Source: InformationWeek via Neowin
    http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199901856&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News

    Comment by Muzammil — June 7, 2007 #

  11. Couldn’t find any other place to submit feedback besides the blog, so here goes.

    I notice that MSN messenger and AIM now have multiple choices for the color of skin that the client (and IM windows) can be. This works -very- well with Windows Vista since you can change the color of the windows to anything you like. But with Yahoo? I’m trapped in indigo or blue.

    I appreciate a white on black color scheme. When will I be able to have a nice shiny black yahoo messenger to go with my nice shiny black vista?

    Comment by Clockwork — June 7, 2007 #

  12. Tiny problem in searchbar:

    If we have a contact twice time in address book, and input same name and last name… We can’t know his nickname into search results (same name display) :o (

    Comment by Olivier D. alias ze kat — June 9, 2007 #

  13. Bad day without YM.. Really Bored Day!

    Comment by Nolce — June 10, 2007 #

  14. Here’s how to clear the cached entries in the contact search bar:

    1. Sign out of Messenger.
    2. Open this folder: C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache
    3. Find the file that ends with “.conversationhistory”.
    (Note there might be more than one; there will be one for each ID that has signed into this computer. You can repeat the steps below for each file.)

    If you want to just clear the list once, then delete the file. If you want to clear the list and prevent it from getting populated in the future…

    4. Right-click on the file and choose “Edit” (open the file in Notepad).
    5. Select All (Ctrl+A), then Delete.
    6. Save the file (Ctrl+S), then close it.
    7. Right click the file again and choose “Properties”
    8. Click the “Read only” check box so it is checked.
    9. Click OK.

    Comment by DaveC — June 16, 2007 #

  15. One of the great things about this feature is that it was designed to work entirely from the keyboard, without requiring you to touch the mouse at any point. To this end, you can use the Tab and Shift-Tab keys to move the selection up or down in the menu to select the specific person and action you want (or you can also use the up/down arrow keys).

    Comment by DaveC — June 16, 2007 #

  16. i couldnt install web messanger:(

    Comment by eq lady! — June 19, 2007 #

  17. eq lady – there is no install required to use Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. Just go to http://webmessenger.yahoo.com and sign in with your Yahoo! ID and password.

    The only thing preventing you from using it is if you don’t have Flash 9.0 installed. You can check what version of Flash you’re running by going here:
    http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_15507

    If you’re not running 9.0, go here to get the latest version of Flash for your browser:
    http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

    Thanks,

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — June 19, 2007 #

  18. This is a great feature, but I think there is more to do. I think a Download Manager would be nice on Yahoo Messenger….Maybe you want to do something else that requires closing Yahoo!Messenger…Having a download manager would make it possible to resume a download if the person on the oser side of the screen is still online.

    Comment by orgicus — June 20, 2007 #

  19. please sarah i can’tuse the contact search bar evrytime i log in a kind of bluewall covering hinders it i use nec e616v wap browser phone(3G)pls help.fromNigeria.

    Comment by Dominic — June 26, 2007 #

  20. I tried doing as DaveC suggested for deleting names in the yahoo messenger contact search bar. I tried both ways he suggested and neither worked it still came up on me with a list of anyone and everyone who messaged me. Any idea how to get rid of this at all. Any help would be appreciated!

    Comment by Dee — August 10, 2007 #

  21. COMO PUEDO BORRAR LA LISTA DE “CONTACT SEARCH BAR” EN EL MESSENGER

    ((( HOW DO I DELETE LIST OF CONTACT SEARCH BAR IN MESSENGER))
    THANKS

    Comment by GINA — October 16, 2007 #

  22. Just simply delete the Cache folder in messenger. Find the messenger folder in Yahoo, in program files.

    Yahoo will create a new cache when you sign back in.

    Comment by psych — June 11, 2008 #

  23. still don’t work. how do you clear the contacts in the contact search bar???

    Comment by d-wizzle — January 26, 2009 #

  24. i would like to delete seach bar off of my profile tonight

    thanks

    Comment by tammy — June 6, 2009 #

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