Getting Started with Windows Messenger

To fire up Messenger, look at the bottom-right corner of your screen for the tiny Messenger iconit looks like two tiny peoplein the Notification area, as shown in Figure 12.1.

Figure 12.1. Double-click the tiny people to start Messenger.

If this icon doesn't appear in your Notification area, click Start, All Programs, and see if Windows Messenger appears in the menu. If it does, click it. (If it isn't listed, it might have been hidden using the Set Program Access and Defaults tool. See the note at the beginning of this chapter to see how to fix this.)

The first time you start Messenger, you'll see a blank window that says "Click Here to Sign In." Click there, and Messenger will walk you through a setup wizard to gather your personal information. You'll want to be sure you're connected to the Internet before proceeding.

Signing In with Your .NET Passport

If you haven't already signed up for a Passport, you'll have to do that now. Messenger will walk you through the .NET Passport Wizard to get this set up.

To learn about Passport and the .NET Passport Wizard, p. 352.

To link up with Passport, you'll have to provide an email address. You can use your current email address, or you can set up a Microsoft Hotmail or MSN email address. If you have already set up a Passport, you'll only need to enter your email address and password, following the .NET Passport Wizard's instructions. Then whenever you log on, Windows will use this Passport automatically.

NOTE

You can change the Passport associated with your Windows user account (and the email address it's linked to) from the User Accounts control panel. To do this, click Start, Control Panel, User Accounts. Click on your account's icon, and then click Change My .NET Passport.

TIP

If you're concerned about privacy, you can always create a Hotmail or other free email account just to use for your .NET Passport and messenger.

Signing In to Messenger

When the Passport setup process is finished, or if you had already set up your Passport earlier, Messenger will ask you to sign in, as shown in Figure 12.2. It may seem odd that you have to sign in to Windows, and then sign in to Messenger separately. The reasons the process is separate are (a) so you can choose whether or not you want to be available to others who might want to use Messenger to contact you, and (b) you might have several different Passport accounts that you want to use at various times.

Figure 12.2. The Messenger Sign In screen asks for your Passport password. You can also choose to have Messenger sign in automatically when you log on to Windows XP.

By default, Windows will display your Passport email address. If you happen to have multiple passports, you can select an alternate one from the drop-down list, or you can just type in a different email address.

You can also choose to have Messenger sign on automatically when you log on to Windows. If you always want Messenger active and available when you're using your computer, check Sign Me In Automatically. You can always change this selection later on.

Finally, enter your Passport password and click OK.

If Messenger can't sign in, see "Messenger Gives Connection Error When I Sign In" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

When you've signed on to Windows Messenger, you'll see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 12.3. The Messenger screen shows you your current passport account or the name you want to display to others (I'll show you how to change this later in the chapter). Finally, the window shows you which of your contacts are presently online and which are not.

Figure 12.3. The Messenger screen shows you who's online and who's not.

Adding Contacts

A contact is a person whom you've identified as someone you want to be able to chat with. Before you can communicate with Messenger, you'll need to add your coworkers, colleagues, clients, friends, or family to your Messenger contact list.

To add a contact, click the Add a Contact button at the bottom of the Messenger window or click Tools, Add a Contact. Windows will ask you whether you want to select a contact by their email address (if you know their Passport sign-in name), or whether you want to search for them by name. Right now you can only search through the .NET Messenger (Passport user) directory, your own personal Address Book, or, on corporate networks, Active Directory, but Microsoft may add other search directories later on. Select a method, and click Next.

In the next step, enter the person's email address or Passport sign in name and click Next, or fill out the search form, which is shown in Figure 12.4. Fill in as much information as you can to help narrow things down, select the desired directory under Search For This Person At, and then click Next.

Figure 12.4. To search for a contact in the .NET Messenger directory or your Address Book, fill in as much information as you can.

After a moment, Windows will show you a list of matching names and locations. If you don't see the desired name listed, select Back and change some of your selection criteria. If you do see the entry for your contact, select it and click Next.

As a matter of privacy, your new contact will be notified that you have added them to your contact list. Likewise, you'll be notified if others add you to their contact list. (For your own privacy, if you want to you can block them from knowing if you're online and from sending you messages. I'll show you how in the next section.)

Of course, to add them to your list, your contacts must already have signed up for a Passport account. (This, I'm sure, is part of Microsoft's Grand Plan.) In fact, if you select a contact by searching your own Windows Address Book, and the associated email account isn't registered with Microsoft Passport, Messenger will ask you if you want it to send them an email asking them to sign up. (Don't worry, you'll be able to cancel this if you don't want it to happen.)

When contacts are added to your list, you'll receive notification when any of them sign in, as shown in Figure 12.5. If you find this annoying, you can disable notifications using the Preferences settings, which I'll discuss in the next section.

Figure 12.5. When your contacts sign in, you'll receive notification.

Setting Messenger Options and Preferences

Messenger has the potential to intrude upon your workday and upon your privacy. You can control how much information about you is revealed, and what ways Messenger is allowed to notify and interact with you. In this section, I'll cover the Messenger options including its privacy settings. Remember that if you use Hotmail, you'll also need to configure your Hotmail privacy settings (such as whether or not your name is listed in the Member directory) on the Hotmail site.

To change Messenger options, click Tools and Options, and then view the six options tabs. I'll go through them in turn.

Personal Information

The Personal tab (see Figure 12.6) lets you choose the name others see when you're signed in to Messenger. By default this is your Passport name; that is, your email address. For privacy reasons, you want to change this to your name or nickname.

Figure 12.6. The Personal tab lets you change your displayed name and some other preferences.

You can also select the font used to display chat messages, can enable or disable the automatic display of "smilies" or emoticons (with graphics enabled, if your friend types :) you'll see ), and optionally, let Messenger send (anonymously) information to Microsoft about how well it's working, information that presumably will be used to improve the software.

Phone Contact Information

The Phone tab lets you enter home and work telephone numbers that your contacts will be able to view. If you're using Messenger for business purposes, you'll probably want to enter your work telephone number here. Otherwise, I suggest leaving this page blank. You can always give out your phone number later on if you think it's appropriate.

Messenger Preferences

The Preferences tab, shown in Figure 12.7, lets you control how Messenger starts, and how and when it's allowed to alert (or you might say "annoy") you as contacts and messages come and go. The options you are most likely to want to think about changing are

• Run Windows Messenger When Windows Starts This is enabled by default. Uncheck to prevent Messenger from starting up automatically. (Automatic sign-in must be changed separately, from the Sign In window. To change that setting, click File, Sign Out, and then File, Sign In.)

• Show Me as Away If your computer sits idle for 5 minutes, by default your contacts will see a notification that you're "away." This is another privacy issue. You can change the time, or block the message entirely by unchecking this option.

• Alerts You can enable or disable pop-up messages and sounds for when contacts sign on and off or send messages with the options in the Alerts section. If you have installed the Messenger add-in pack, you can also control the alerts for new mail.

• File Transfer This lets you change the folder where any files your contacts send you land. The default folder is My Received Files inside My Documents.

Figure 12.7. The Preferences tab lets you change Messenger startup, alert, and file transfer options.

Privacy Options

The Privacy tab lets you choose to prevent specific contacts, or all unknown contacts, from seeing your status and from sending you messages. Additionally, you can also see who has added you to their contact list, configure an alert to occur when someone adds you to their contact list, configure security for your Passport by instructing Messenger to always prompt you for your password, and lastly, prevent Messenger from downloading "tabs" (announcement areas that display information such as new-email announcements) if you are using a public computer. All of these options have been provided to allow you to control the amount of security you feel you need.

Figure 12.8 shows the Privacy tab's Allow and Block lists. By default all of your contacts and "All Other Users" are in the Allow List, which lets them see when you sign in and out, and lets them send you messages. You can move individual contacts over to the Block List to shut them out. Move an entry by selecting it in one list or the other, and clicking Allow or Block.

Figure 12.8. The Privacy tab lets you control who knows you're online.

You also can move the Other .NET Messenger Users entry. Other .NET Messenger Users applies to people who have added you to their contact list but whom you haven't yet added to yours. In other words, these are unverified strangers. By default, Other .NET Messenger Users is put on the Block side. Unless you're concerned that other people will look you up by name and contact you, you can probably move this entry to the Allow side.

Connection Options

The Connection tab can normally be ignored. If, however, your computer is on a network that uses a SOCKS or Web proxy server, you might need to make entries here in order to use Messenger. Your ISP or network administrator will tell you if you need to do this.

Finally, when you've enlisted your friends, signed in to Messenger, and gone over your privacy options, you're ready to chat.

Accounts

On a corporate network, there may be an Accounts tab. If your organization runs its own instant messaging server, use this tab to select which server Messenger should use as its primary connection. You can select the standard, public Microsoft server used by the general public (.NET Passport) or a private server run by your organization (Communications Service). Whichever one you select, you can simultaneously connect to the other service by checking My Contacts Include Users of .NET Messenger Service or My Contacts Include Users of a Communications Service. In this case you can create contacts from either service's membership list.

Organizing Your Contacts

By default, Messenger displays all of the contacts you enter under the title "All Contacts." If you have many contacts, you may wish to separate them into categories such as "Business," "Family," "Friends," "Political Commentators," or whatever. It's pretty easy to do:

1.	Right-click a group name, such as All Contacts, and select Create a New Group.
2.	Enter a name for the group.
3.	Drag contacts from All Contacts to the new group. Contacts may be entered in more than one group.

It's easier to view and manage large contact lists when they're organized this way. To remove a contact from a group, right-click the name and select Remove Contact from Group. This doesn't delete the contact; it remains in All Contacts. To completely delete a contact, right click and select Delete Contact.