Yahoo! Mail Tutorials

Advanced Chat Features

Personalizing Chat Customizing Chat Blocking Chat Messages Unblocking Chat Messages Chatting with Windows Live Users If You Use Yahoo! Messenger

If You Use Yahoo! Messenger...

Chat is very similar to instant messaging through Yahoo! Messenger in that you and your contact can communicate instantly through text messages. With Yahoo! Mail chat, you don't need to install the Yahoo! Messenger application on your computer—you can use chat anywhere you can sign in to your Mail account. This comes in handy when you’re sitting in an Internet cafe in Paris enjoying the lovely scenery and want to share your thoughts in real time with your friends.

While chatting in Yahoo! Mail is limited to text messaging, Yahoo! Messenger provides a more flexible environment in a number of ways:

  • More communication options, such as PC-to-PC calling, Phone In, and Phone Out
  • Video chats (requires Messenger 10)
  • Photo and file sharing
  • Archiving your IM conversations
  • Using images other than avatars as your personal display image
  • More control over privacy, for example, making yourself invisible to just some of your contacts
  • Interactive plug-ins, such as Yahoo! Games, and Yahoo! Maps

Messenger gives you many features and a variety of ways to communicate with your friends. To take advantage of these features, go to messenger.yahoo.com and download Yahoo! Messenger.

If you already use Messenger, here are a few things to know when using chat in Yahoo! Mail:

  • One at a time: You can’t use Yahoo! Mail chat feature and Messenger at the same time with the same Yahoo! ID.

    • If you're using Messenger and you then sign into Mail, your chat status will be "Offline" even if you signed out of chat with an "Available" or "Busy" status. This prevents your Messenger session from closing.
    • If you make yourself available to chat, your Messenger session will close.
    • If you sign into Messenger while chatting in Mail, your chat session automatically closes.

  • Who you can chat with: In Messenger, you build your Messenger List by adding the names of the people with whom you want to communicate. You have to get permissions from contacts to add them to your list, and they must ask your OK to be on their lists.

    Yahoo! Mail chat is different; there's no separate list of people you want to chat with. Instead, anyone with a Yahoo! ID or Windows Live™ Messenger ID in your Yahoo! Contacts can chat with you whenever you're both online unless you block his messages. However, if you want to block chat messages from a person who is on your Messenger List, you must remove his or her name from that list before blocking chat messages.

    Note: The exception is your Windows Live™ contacts. You must always ask permission to add them to your list in Messenger and in Mail.

 

What’s Next

To chat or not to chat? There is no question. Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger make it all so easy.

 

Help Topics

 
 

Words to Know

  • Avatar: a character that you can use when interacting with friends online. By changing hairstyles, clothes, accessories, and backgrounds, you can create your own unique persona.
  • Contact: a person with whom you interact; someone to whom you might want to send an email, instant message, or text message.
  • Display image: a picture or avatar that represents you in some way and that you share with your contacts during IM conversations.
  • Instant messaging: the ability to exchange messages in real time with other people over the Internet.
  • LAUNCHcast Radio: a streaming music service that allows you to create your own customized station tailored to your tastes and provides an extensive collection of other music stations that offer a wide variety of genres and themes to choose from.
  • PC-to-PC calling: the ability to call another person’s computer from your computer; similar to placing a phone call. Both you and the person you are calling must have a Yahoo! ID and be logged into Yahoo! Messenger.
  • Windows Live™ Messenger: Microsoft® Windows’ free instant messaging application.
  • Yahoo! Contacts: a listing of people and their email addresses associated with each Yahoo! Mail account; also known as Address Book.
  • Yahoo! Messenger: an application that lets you communicate using your voice, text, or other means with one or more people over the Internet in real time (instantly).
  • Yahoo! Phone In: a premium, subscription-based service of Yahoo! Voice that attaches a phone number to your Yahoo! ID so that you can receive phone calls to your computer through Messenger.
  • Yahoo! Phone Out: a pre-paid Yahoo! Voice account that allows you to make calls using Messenger from your computer to any regular phone or mobile phone in over 30 countries.