Placing and Receiving Calls
| Placing a Call | Guidance for Domestic and International Calls | Receiving a Call | Using Sounds and Background Music | Placing a Call on Hold | Forwarding Incoming Calls |
Receiving a Call
Yahoo! Messenger offers two ways to receive calls:
PC-to-PC calling—any of your friends who know your Yahoo! ID and use Messenger 7 or higher can call your computer and the two of you can talk just like you’re both on the phone. You just need to be signed in to receive the call. And the best part? It’s free.
Yahoo! Phone In—a
premium Yahoo! Messenger feature that allows your friends to call your
computer from a traditional telephone or a mobile phone. All you
need to do is sign up for the Yahoo! Phone In service. To learn more,
take a look at the Signing Up for Yahoo! Voice tutorial.
You’ll need a headset or a microphone and speakers to use these features. To ensure that they are set up properly, read through the setup task in the Introducing Yahoo! Messenger’s Call Features tutorial.
Here’s How
When someone calls your computer, a notification of the call opens in the lower portion of your computer screen.
You’ll also hear a ringtone unless you’ve disabled ringing.
Respond by clicking one of the buttons:
Accept: If you accept the call, the connection is made, and you can begin talking just like you do on the telephone.
Decline: If you decline the call, the caller has the option of leaving you a voice message. By the way, your caller won’t know that you’ve declined the call.
IM Only (only available for PC-to-PC calls): If you select this response, the call ends. A conversation window opens so you and your contact can communicate by typing messages instead.
If you don’t respond within about 20 seconds, your caller has the option to leave a voice message.
If you accept the call, the call area opens in the conversation window for PC-to-PC calls and in a separate window for Phone In calls, and you can begin talking.
Your can end the call by clicking the End Call button.
What’s Next: Listen to Voice Mail or Forward Your Calls
Your friends can leave voice messages when you’re not signed into Messenger or not accepting calls, and you can listen to the messages through an email account of your choice. Take a look at the Setting Up Voice Messaging tutorial to learn how.
If you don’t want to miss calls, forward your incoming calls to your traditional or mobile phone.
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.
- 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.
- Ringtone: a brief audio file played to indicate an incoming call. You can select your preferred ringtone in Yahoo! Messenger.
- Voicemail: a message left in the caller’s own voice for the intended recipient to listen to later.
- Yahoo! ID: the name by which a person is known to all Yahoo! networks.
- 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.