13 Skype uses and tricks you might not have thought of

Microsoft has provided us with a fantastic tool to be able to chat through videoconferences with family, friends or even to carry out some type of business or work quickly and easily. Today in this space we are going to tell you 13 uses and tricks of Skype that perhaps you had not thought about

Blocking contacts, creating group conversations, sending video messages at any time, making phone calls to landlines or mobiles and even sending SMS are some of the tricks that you may not you know and what we can do with Skype.

1.Search Contacts

Skype gives us the possibility to search for users through a search engine that initially allows us to search among the contacts that we have added to our Skype account by simply typing in your name or email address.

If we want to search outside our contact list, we just have to click on the button search on Skype and in this way we will return the results of all the people that match the search terms that we have indicated above.

If instead of searching by indicating names and surnames, we perform the search by email, we will obtain more exact results and we will be able to find someone the person we really love quickly.

Another very important option that you may not be aware of is that of being able to link your Skype account to Facebook, having the possibility to add or search as a contact people who are your friends on this social network.

2.Favorite contacts

As we use Skype on a daily basis, more and more contacts are added to our account and with whom we communicate via chat or videoconferenceIt is natural for our schedule to grow, but sometimes this can become a drag.

To make our work easier, Skype allows us to select our most used contacts or with whom we talk most frequently, marking them as favorite contactsThis Skype functionality is easy to use and will make the most of our time.

To be able to add a contact as a favorite, we just have to perform the following steps:

1. We click with the left mouse button on the symbol + located to the right of the wordfavorites

   

2. Actually, we select the contact or contacts that we wish to mark as favourites, clicking with the left mouse button on each name.

   

3. And finally we press the button Add located in the lower right area of ​​our screen.

   

3.Create chat groups

On more than one occasion, we need to create chat groups, either to discuss labor issues with our work team, or simply To have a family or friendly stay. This is possible thanks to Skype.

Skype allows us to create groups quickly and easily, in order to be in contact with a complete group of people and thus treat collectively any type of theme that we need.

To do this, we will perform the following steps:

1. First of all, we will click on the icon to create groups, located in the upper left area, next to the search icon .

   

2. Next we must select all the contacts we want to add to the group, and once selected, in the lower left area we can see all the contacts that we have chosen and in the right zonewe will click on the Add button to create our group.

   

3. In addition to chatting using the keyboard with all the people added to the group, we can create group videoconferences, voice calls or even send files to all the group participants.

   

4. Once the group is created, we can activate or deactivate notifications if we click on the name of the group.

   

5. And even leave, bookmark or edit the name of the group we've created.

   

4.Make calls to landlines and mobiles

Skype, in addition to being able to connect two or more people who are registered on said platform, also allows you to make calls to landlines and mobile phones through Voip technology.

Thanks to this possibility, making calls to any part of the world will be easy, simple and it will also be much cheaper than if We make these calls with our usual telephone operators. Skype has a series of monthly plans that can be paid either for the time we talk or for a flat rate, as we are most interested in.

5.Send SMS

Skype, in addition to making calls to any landline or mobile phone, allows us to send SMS messages if we have a balance in our account. In this way, we can easily communicate with another person who has a mobile terminal.

To be able to send an SMS, we will dial the mobile number to which we want to send the message and click on the chat icon In this way, we will see its own interface to be able to write, as if it were an instant message, and it will allow us to send it as SMS.

6.Skype as phonebook

Skype not only allows us to have a contact list of people who also use this instant messaging platform, but also gives us the possibility to add telephone numbersas if it were a particular contact list.

This gives us a great advantage as users, since we will be able to have this phone book wherever we are, thanks to the fact that the phone book will be synchronized with our Skype accountand we can see it from any computer with internet access or in short any mobile device.

We just have to press the right mouse button to display the upper and lower menus, and in the lower menu, in the right area, we will have the option Save number.

7.Send files and video messages

At any given moment it may be that we are not interested in speaking with a specific contact, but we do need to send them a message, preferably by voice and video, since we cannot explain everything through chat. what do we need.

Thanks to Skype, this is possible, we can send any of our contacts a video message that they can view at any time without interruptions. To do this, click on the plus symbol, located next to the phone icon and click on send video message

We will have up to 3 minutes to tell our contact everything we want and once recorded, we can repeat the recording or finally send said video.

But not only can we send video messages, but we can share any type of file, be it an image, a document text or even an audio file, thanks to Skype's built-in file sharing feature.

8.Block Contact

How many times has it happened to us that we don't want to know anything about someone or we simply don't want them to know even when we're online? For this Skype gives us the opportunity to block contacts.

We can block contacts collectively or individually. Opening a conversation with one of our contacts, we press the right button and in the lower right area we have the option to block contact.

Within the option to block contact, there are two modalities, the first of which would be remove it from our list of contact persons and the second one would be used to report said contact as unwanted This last option is highly recommended, especially when we receive spam messages from other users who may not even be ourselves we wanted to add

9.View profile

Thanks to the union of the different applications provided by the Windows 8 metro interface, we can see more information from our contacts of Skype quickly and easily.

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If we have a conversation with a contact open, we must click on the right button so that the upper and lower menus are displayed and we will click on View profileThis will open a new window with our contact&39;s information, occupying half of our screen."

10.Disable notifications

Another of the options included in the Skype application of our Windows 8 under the metro interface, is to be able to activate or deactivate contact notificationsat our convenience.

Thanks to this possibility, our Skype will notify us every time our contact sends us a message, or tries to send us a file or a video message, or if, on the contrary, we do not want to find out about this, we we can easily deactivate.

11.Write messages or statuses

On many occasions we feel like writing a reflection, a thought or simply how we are that day. All this is possible thanks to the possibility offered by the Skype application to write a totally personal message for all our contacts to see.

Clicking on our profile photo, located in the upper right area, an options window of our account will expand, in which we will initially see our profile photo, along with our name and address mail, and below we will have the box where we can write our personal message

12.Change status

On many occasions we may be interested in letting our contacts know that we are behind our computer or mobile device under Windows 8 with our Skype open. But it may be that we are also interested in changing the state.

All of this is possible thanks to Skype, which gives us the possibility to meet in an available state, in which everyone can see that we are online and that we can answer, or, staying connected, we can be with the status invisible From this status we will be able to see who or who is connected, but they they will not see us online.

13.New instant translation service for videoconferences

As if the tricks we have mentioned above were not enough, Skype surprises us with a completely new service that will achieve interaction between people from different countries, without language being a barrier.

In the previous video we can see a demonstration in which two interlocutors speak in their particular language, and Skype is responsible for translating and reproducing both by voice and writing , the message sent by the first caller. This is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular possibilities that Microsoft's Skype service offers us. Please note that this service is still in the testing phase and Microsoft has not given specific dates on when it will be released.

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