Chatting With Your Contacts
| What Is... | Being Available to Chat | Starting a Chat | Receiving a Chat Message | Moving the Chat Area | Turning Chat Off |
What Is Chat in the Yahoo! Mail Classic?
Email is great. It’s much faster than snail mail, and you usually get a response sooner than later. But, have you ever been writing an email wishing that you could have instant communication with your friends without picking up the phone? You can with Yahoo! Mail’s chat feature. Chat lets you and your contact exchange messages in "real time", meaning "right now", and all while using Yahoo! Mail Classic and without having to download an instant messenger application. (And it’s free!)
Your contact must have a Yahoo! ID or
a Windows Live™ Messenger ID
and must be signed in to either Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger,
or another compatible instant messaging application. 
So, let’s just repeat the highlights and get you chatting!
- Chat lets you communicate with your contacts in real time so that you receive instant replies.
- Use Yahoo! Mail chat without downloading additional software.
- Use chat to communicate with all of your Yahoo! and Windows Live contacts. All they need is to sign into Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, or another instant messaging application.
Note: Not all operating systems and browsers support chat. Click here for more information about system requirements for chat.
What’s Next
You can also contact your friend by sending a mobile text message through Yahoo! Mail. To learn more, take a look at the Using Mobile Text Messaging tutorial.
Tip: If you already use Yahoo! Messenger, you might want to know more about the differences between Messenger and chat. The If You Use Yahoo! Messenger tutorial has all the details.
Words to Know
- Contact: a person with whom you interact; someone to whom you might want to send an email, instant message, or text message.
- Instant messaging: the ability to exchange messages in real time with other people over the Internet.
- Mobile text messaging: sending and receiving written messages on a variety of devices via "short message service" (SMS).
- Windows Live™ Messenger: Microsoft® Windows’ free instant messaging application.
- Yahoo! ID: the name by which a person is known to all Yahoo! networks.
- 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).