I have been using Yahoo Messenger for quite some time and eagerly jumped on their latest release Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta which was released yesterday. With the recent release they have added a quite a lot of features to the already popular IM client.

Here are some of the tips and tricks you can use with Yahoo Messenger. Most of the tricks are all part of the preferences menu but have not been used as frequently by users. I will expose most of these that you should know.

Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta Only Tricks

Use Hot Key to Open Yahoo From The System Tray or Taskbar

Many a times you may close the yahoo messenger which minimizes it to the system tray or, the yahoo messenger window may lose focus while you have some other application over it or have minimized it to the taskbar. You may either have to double click on the messenger icon in the system tray or manually open it from the taskbar in such cases.

Yahoo Messenger 9 saves you the trouble of using your mouse to bring the window into focus, simply pressing the Windows + Y will bring the yahoo messenger window on top of other windows thus allowing you instantly send a message to your contacts without even touching your mouse.

Though its hardly been 12 hours since I began using this feature I am already addicted to it. To enable this feature go to Messenger -> Preferences or use the short cut key Ctrl + Shift + P when Yahoo Messenger is in focus. Select the General option and check the box next to Press Windows + Y to open Yahoo Messenger & start a Conversation. Click on Ok and you will be able to use the hotkey now.

Switch To Compact View for Contacts

The default setting for Yahoo Messenger 9 is to use the detailed view for contacts, though this shows you a detailed view of your contacts it takes up unnecessary space, making contact browsing a bit difficult. You can switch to a more compact view by choosing the Compact View option.

To do this go to Preferences -> Appearance in that check the Compact View radio button and click on ok. Your Yahoo Messenger should now sport a compact and easy to browse interface.

 

Tricks Related to All Yahoo Messengers

Quickly Toggle (Hide / Show) Offline Contacts

Usually you may have a huge list of contacts in your Yahoo Messenger and many of them may be offline. Showing all the contacts usually makes it a little difficult to find contacts who are online, say your have 30 users in a group and only one of them is online and is at the 29th position. To get to that contact you may have to do a bit of scrolling.

Yahoo has a feature where you can see all the contacts or only view those who are online at any given moment. This feature compacts the contacts making it easy to communicate, but sometimes you may want to send an offline message to a contact who is not online, instead of using the mouse you can use the hot key Ctrl + H. Ctrl + H hot key toggles your offline contacts.

If you press Ctrl + H when the messenger is displaying the offline contacts it will hide it and vice versa, this is a very useful shortcut and comes in handy quite a lot of time.

Get Rid of the Notification Window When Somebody IM’s You

Usually when somebody IM’s you the window pops up on the screen and this gets very annoying when you are in middle of doing something important. Instead of having the window disturb you, you can choose to minimize it to the window without popping up on the screen.

To do this go to Preferences -> Messages option in that select the option Minimize the message window to a taskbar. If you still want to see what message has been type you can select the check box Show messages at bottom right of the screen. When you choose this option you will get IM notification similarly to how you get Yahoo mail notifications.

Curb Status Messages while Listening to Yahoo Radio, Playing Yahoo Games or Broadcasting Your Webcam

Usually when you use Yahoo services like the Launchcast Radio or are Playing a game on Yahoo, the messenger automatically changes your status messages to Playing Yahoo Pool or Listening to Launchcast etc. Now suppose you are playing a good game of pool, and your boss checks your status which shows Playing Yahoo Pool how bad would it be.

Similarly when you are broadcasting a webcam Yahoo adds a default status message saying View My Webcam allowing the world to know that you are broadcasting a webcam.

If you do not want Yahoo to automatically change your status while doing any of the above things, go to Preferences -> Privacy, in that uncheck all the boxes under the option Change my status automatically when I am.

Log Your Chat Sessions to Your Hard Drive

You can save all your chat logs when you chat with Yahoo Messenger, these archive will be stored in an encrypted format on your local hard drive. To enable the archiving feature go to Preference -> Archive and check the radio button next to Yes, save all my messages.

On the other hand if you do not want to save your archives (like when you are on a public computer) select the radio button next to No, do not save any of my messages.

If you want to save your messages but delete them when you log out select the radio button next to Yes, save all my messages, but clear them each time I sign out.

If you have any other tricks you would like to share do leave it in the comments. I would be glad to hear from you.

Are the tips helpful to you? I am always looking to getting feedback and your comments are always helpful, do comment and let me know what you think about it, it hardly takes a minute.