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Quick tips and timesavers for Yahoo! Messenger

November 5, 2009 on 2:06 pm | In 10 version, 9.0 version, Features | 12 Comments

Yahoo! Messenger for Windows has many more features than most of us use in a given day. Our preferences menu is chock full of useful settings that can help you customize your Yahoo! Messenger or make you a more efficient user.

One preference I always set when I upgrade to a new version is “Always use my fonts and colors” (Messenger > Preferences > Appearance). That means that no matter what quirky font, color or size my friends use when they message me, it will always show up in the style I prefer (Arial, 12 for anyone who’s keeping track). I think I discovered this after my college roommate kept insisting on IMs with fluorescent green Tahoma letters in size 16.

While I like to think of myself as young, my aging eyes do betray me. I got tired of squinting at my list to find a friend so a few years ago, I changed my preferences to increase the font size of my contact list (you can also change the font). You can even have online friends show up in bold so they’re more noticeable. You’ll find this ageist setting in Preferences > Appearance, under the Messenger List section.

We’ve all dealt with random people IM’ing us. Sometimes we know them, sometimes they are spammers. To help me quickly separate the riff raff from my real friends, I changed my preference to “When I receive messages from people not on my Messenger list, show the messages in a single list” (Messenger > Preferences > Messages). That way, the messages are all listed in one window and I can quickly reply or ignore them (or mark them as spam). They appear in a window that looks similar to the one used for offline messages.

On the efficiency tip are a couple of shortcuts that may come in handy. If you’re like me and leave your Messenger window open all day long, you can save a step when it comes time to shut down at the end of the day. Under Preferences > General you’ll find a setting for “Sign out of Messenger when I close the main window”. Select that and save yourself the extra step of signing out and then closing down Messenger.

And last but not least is a shortcut you can use to update your status message more quickly. You may already know about the Windows + y shortcut, but do you know the Windows + Shift + y shortcut? That one takes you right to the waiting status message menu where you can start typing your deep thoughts and important updates. For this to work, you first have to enable it under Preferences > General; look for the checkbox that says “Enable system-wide shortcut keys to activate Messenger”.

What are some of your favorite settings, shortcuts, tips or tricks in Yahoo! Messenger? Leave a comment to let us know.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

12 Comments »

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  1. yahoo updates are shown only if i log out of yahoo then log in again. WHY???

    Comment by emrares — November 6, 2009 #

  2. At least you’re getting Y! Updates. On YM 10.0 BETA, that tab worked the first few days but hasn’t worked since. I get the sunburst showing new updates are available but when I click on the tab, it’s blank white in the area where the updates should be.

    Comment by Lenny V. — November 6, 2009 #

  3. @emrares, Lenny V – Please be sure you’re using the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger 10 (10.0.0.542), available at http://messenger.yahoo.com/download/winbeta

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — November 6, 2009 #

  4. Miss Sarah B.

    Please help, when I enter some particular rooms. I don’t see people typing but I can see them enter, leave or talk on the mic.

    I am using Yahoo! Messenger 10.0.0.542.

    Also someone in Chat told me he can remove the text I posted in the room so nobody can see me.

    Please help, Miss Sarah B.

    Thanks.

    Comment by Dave — November 6, 2009 #

  5. Foe Lenny V. Clear your browser caches. For reason which escape me… those gadgets seem to depend on IE rendering to display. Hope that helps for you as Yahoo will have NO clue and NO means to communicate that information to you.

    For the person who had their post deleted about chat… well, chat is apparently a TABOO subject. Sore spot for them maybe? Yeah.. I think so.

    Comment by kckman — November 6, 2009 #

  6. the new font feature works quite well and overall its an impressive application. good luck to Yahoo. they’re gonna need it. Carl Parisien Natick MA

    Comment by Carl Parisien Natick MA — November 7, 2009 #

  7. Why can’t I change my yahoo messenger avatar photo? It’s just a stupid black picture all the time?

    Is it really that difficult to fix the damn problem?

    And yes, I have checked all the firewall/browser cache/yahoo version on my end.

    Comment by Catalin — November 8, 2009 #

  8. @Dave

    It’s a program I released over a month ago thinking that it would be patched by now. Go figure!

    It’s easy to find it with just about any search engine.

    WTF by Twiz or WTF II by Twiz

    Enjoy!

    Comment by twiz — November 10, 2009 #

  9. I cannot save any photos that are shared in the current version…nothing happens once the location is selected. What am I missing here?

    Comment by LindaB — November 13, 2009 #

  10. I down load new yahoo messanger version-10 but i could not able to make viedio call or web cam i am having os windows vista home premium please help me

    cheers

    Comment by george — November 16, 2009 #

  11. This is something that has irritated me since version 8 and I had so hoped that it would be improved with version 10. The textbox where I am typing my outgoing message only holds one line of text since I am using a larger font than the default. Why can’t the text box be made resizable so that I can see as many lines of text as I would like? This is a very easy thing to change and goes along with standard windows conventions. Why the textbox is set to an unchangeable size, I do not know. This is incredibly annoying as I like to proof my messages before sending them but I have to arrow up and down to see my whole message before sending, AND if I hit the up or down arrows too many times, it take me to previous texts I have sent. PLEASE fix this!

    Comment by saturn744 — November 16, 2009 #

  12. @saturn744 – Are you using the downloadable version of Yahoo! Messenger. e.g. versions 8, 9 or 10? The text box can be resized in those versions. Just hover your mouse on the top part of the text box until you see the cursor with double arrows. Then click and drag to adjust the height of the text entry field.

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — November 17, 2009 #

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