changing then name of contacts within MSN Messenger

[Richard]

Hi,

I have an 'issue' with the contacts list within MSN and I was hoping
Microsoft would make my 'issue' a cool change in their next version, but it
seems nobody has thought of it or cases about it. I need to be able to
contact them with this idea. There is a survey you can call up from the Help
menu but it doesnt ask you anything except to rate the various features 1 to
5, which is useless to me.

What I'd like to be able to do is change people's names in the contact list
to something I'll recognise. I have so many in my list and a lot of them
keep changing their names to completely meaningless crap and it makes
recognising who they are really difficult, even with an email address. Be
nice if I could just change "i'm not at my keyboard right now' to
permanently "Rachel" or something. A lot don't have profiles set up so
right-clicking and going to their profile is useless, but even if they do
have a profile, I don't want to have to do that to recognise who somebody
is.

Any idea how to contact Microsoft with this idea?

Richard

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Greetings Richard,

This has been on the suggestion list for a long, long time. However, you can get this
functionality by using a third-party addition called Messenger Plus. To do so, install
Messenger Plus from here: http://www.msgplus.net (please read through the installation, as
you probably don't want to install the "sponsor"). After installation, open up the main
Messenger window, click the Plus! menu, then Preferences, under Contact List, choose Custom
Names. Please note that this feature also requires MSN Messenger 6.x and will not work in
previous Messenger versions.
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2004 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.

"Richard" > wrote in message ...
>
> Hi,
>
> I have an 'issue' with the contacts list within MSN and I was hoping Microsoft would make
> my 'issue' a cool change in their next version, but it seems nobody has thought of it or
> cases about it. I need to be able to contact them with this idea. There is a survey you can
> call up from the Help menu but it doesnt ask you anything except to rate the various
> features 1 to 5, which is useless to me.
>
> What I'd like to be able to do is change people's names in the contact list to something
> I'll recognise. I have so many in my list and a lot of them keep changing their names to
> completely meaningless crap and it makes recognising who they are really difficult, even
> with an email address. Be nice if I could just change "i'm not at my keyboard right now' to
> permanently "Rachel" or something. A lot don't have profiles set up so right-clicking and
> going to their profile is useless, but even if they do have a profile, I don't want to have
> to do that to recognise who somebody is.
>
> Any idea how to contact Microsoft with this idea?
>
> Richard
>
>