quote:
Originally posted by oneoflittleharmony
The "Show me away when I am inactive" thing will not set me away, even in the middle of the night and I've been sleeping for hours at a time. It's very annoying to the people I talk to apperently, so how do I get MSN to set me away when I forget to turn the away thing on?
When that option is turned on (make sure it is
) Messenger will set your status to a special away status when there isn't any activity registered for an amount of time.
This special away status is actually called "
Idle" (though, in a standard Messenger it is also shown as "Away).
As soon as there is activity again your status is set to "
Online".
However, the Idle status will only kick in when:
- Your previous status is "Online".
When you have any other status, the Idle state will not be triggered.
Also note that there are scripts and other addons which might change your status without you noticing it. So if you have something like that, it might be possible that they set your status to something else, which on its turn prevents Messenger from going in Idle state.
- There isn't any activity for x minutes.
Where 'activity' is keyboard or mouse input.
- But note that there are also (bad made) programs which simulate activity in one way or the other (eg: even some screensavers do this!).
The same with some Messenger Plus! scripts. There are some which act in the same way and thus will 'simulate' activity.
When this happens Messenger will revert your status back to Online as this is all seen as user interaction.
- Also note that if you leave your mouse alone, the mouse cursor can still drift across the screen. And this again counts as activity as your computer doesn't know if it is drifting the mouse or if it is actualy you who is slowly moving the mouse. This happens more with wireless mice than with wired mice though.