ICQ Inside and Out

Two dozen tips for using the pioneer of instant messengers.

Instant messaging is all the rage. AOL Instant Messenger claims more than 30 million users. Microsoft is slowly building a user base for its own messaging product. And the app that sparked the whole craze three years ago, ICQ (now owned by AOL), has steadily grown in popularity. It has also come to be far more powerful than any of its competitors, but many of its features remain unknown to most ICQ users. From checking e-mail to appointment scheduling, ICQ's fancier features can help you stay on top of communications and organize your life. There's much more to ICQ than instant messaging, and we've collected some of our favorite tricks to help you get the most out of it.

ICQ seems to be in a perpetual beta state--its programmers frequently update it and have yet to declare any particular release "final." A large number of ICQ users upgraded to version 99a when it came out, only to see it superseded by version 99b, which had only a few new features but contained some serious changes to the interface. In this article, I provide tips for both 99 editions of ICQ. Where the two versions vary, I give step-by-step instructions for each.

Before We Begin (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Advanced Mode)

When you first launch ICQ, it opens in Simple Mode, meaning many commands are simply unavailable. To get at the app's real power--the features that make it infinitely more useful than AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger--you need to enable Advanced Mode.

To switch from Simple Mode to Advanced Mode, open the Contact List by double-clicking the flower icon in your system tray. Now either select ICQ, Advanced Features or click the To Advanced Mode button. The Simple/Advanced Mode Selection dialog box pops up. Click the Switch To Advanced Mode button. For the purposes of this story, I'll assume you're in Advanced Mode.

Streamline ICQ's Interface

ICQ's interface can seem a bit bewildering--partly because of the program's many features and commands, but also (let's be honest) because of some pretty poor design. Here's how to trim the ICQ interface down to a manageable state.

Show only "live" contacts. A...