Shoutbox

First of all, thank you for this wonderful tool ! It think Messenger Plus! really brings a lot of interesting missing features in MSN Messenger. However, I'd like to propose some enhancements that could be done to make this tool even more wonderful. I don't know if this forum is the best place to suggest enhancements to Messenger Plus! but I didn't find another place to do it... (Maybe it could be interesting to have a "enhancements suggestions" topic in the forums ?)

1) About importing/Exporting my contact list: there a "Export/Import my contact list" option in the "Contacts" menu of MSN Messenger. This is an interesting option, however it only saves and restore the emails of your contacts. Therefore, your contact groups are not saved/restored and your contacts are not restored in the contact group where you had put them. Moreover, the information about Blocked contacts is not saved. All contacts are saved, including blocked contacts, and restore as not blocked. My enhancement proposal is the following: could it be possible to have a more complete "Export/import my contacts" function in Messenger Plus, exporting/importing in a text file not only the mail but also : the blocked/not blocked status, the contact group in which the contact is located, the name given to the contact (when using the personalized names), and the alerts settings defined for this contact ? Maybe it would be fine to use the same format as the standard import/export function from MSN Messenger (an XML file with extention .ctt) by inserting these extra-informations in XML comments, so that the same Contact-list file is compatible both with MSN Messenger import function and Messenger Plus import function, allowing people to share their .ctt files...

2) About using the individual alerts settings for each contact (disconnection, nickname changed, status changed, and connection): i find this function very interresting and I'm using it very often. However, i found it very difficult and exhausting to have to define individually the settings for each one of your contacts, one by one, by a left clic, then "actions alerts" option in the contextual menu displayed, then click on the settings, then ok, bla bla bla... repeated for about 100 contacts... It would be nice to have in the alerts section of the settings window a table with one row for each contact and one column for each alert type (disconnection, nickname changed, status changed, and connection) enabling the user to quickly see all the settings of all the contacts and to change some settings. Including the possibility to select several contacts at the same time with the CTRL key down and to change the value (for one alert event) for all these contacts at once.

Thank you for your reading... And sorry for the mispellings...

Keep going on !!!

1)

• "the blocked/not blocked status", "the contact group in which the contact is located" are all pure Messenger settings and depend on you contactlist and your contacts' status, there is nothing about it to be saved. It is the protocol that is handling these... So impossible...
  
• "the name given to the contact (when using the personalized names)", and "the alerts settings defined for this contact" are all stored with the import/export wizard IIRC.

for number 2, go to Plus! > Prefrences > Notifications

from there you may find it faster to do

Reply to CookieRevised: I think there is a little misunderstood. Let me explain a bit more in details:

What I would like is an enhancement of the Import/Export function that is available in pure MSN Messenger... let me remind here some differences between the Import/Export function that is available in pure MSN Messenger and the import/export function wizard that is available in Messenger Plus:

- if I export my contact list with the i/o function of pure MSN Msgr, then I remove one contact from my contact list, and then I import this previously saved contact list with the same i/o function from pure MSN Msgr, the removed contact is restored back (added to my contact list). When I do the same with the i/o wizard of Msgr Plus!, the contact is NOT restored. Therefore this i/o wizard can not be used as a way to backup my contact list itself but only the associated settings...

- the i/o function of pure MSN Msgr uses a TEXT file (which is not encrypted), i.e. you can use it easily with your own programs, or process it and convert it into other formats... (I'm currently developping a centralized contact manager software based on a database... The idea is to type only once all the informations about your contacts: their email, their MSN id, etc... and then you can export this information into several file formats (such as .reg, Outlook .csv or MSN Messenger .ctt) whereas the i/o wizard of Msgr Plus! is in binary format (and the windows registry settings about the contacts seems to be encrypted)...

- I know that "the blocked/not blocked status" and "the contact group in which the contact is located" are all pure Messenger settings and handled by the protocol... Exactly the same way the contacts themselves that are in my contact list are handled too... And it's yet possible to backup on my local hard drive my contact list using the i/o function from pure MSN Msgr and to restore it later, thus overiding the contact list that is downloaded through the protocol. So it should also be possible to correctly place these restored contacts in the original group where they where located and not in the root of my contact list... And it should also be possible to restore they blocked/not blocked status...

In conclusion, What I would like is an enhacement to the pure MSN Messenger i/o function that would restore my contact list as the standard i/o function from pure MSN Msgr does, then moves my restored contacts to the groups where they where originally located when the export was done, and set their blocked/not blocked status as it was when the export was done...

The current situation is quite unsuited. What I have to do for the moment if I want to backup/restore my contact list is the following:
1) export my contact list using the standard i/o function from pure MSN Msgr
2) export associated settings using the i/o wizard function from Msgr Plus!

So I have to perform TWO exports and TWO imports... And even with this, I'm loosing the groups information (because all the contacts are restored in the root) and the blocked/not blocked information... So, to conclude: I have to use TWO i/o functions at the same time, and even with that, the backup/restore is incomplete...

---

Reply to saralk: Thank you for your advise, but I had already noticed the Plus! > Prefrences > Notifications...

It's better than nothing but it's not helping me a lot: If you want to have an alert for all your contacts when their nickname is changed, you just have to tick the check box in this panel, Perfect !

But what if you want to have an alert for all your contacts except X and Y... ? As it is not possible to define exceptions to this general-rule check box for some of your contacts (because the individual check boxes become disabled, unfortunately !), you have to uncheck this check box (which thus becomes useless) and to manually one by one tick the check box of all your 150 contacts except a few of them (X and Y)... not very practical