How to talk on Skype? How to talk as a threesome on Skype
If a person for whom online communication is commonplace were asked how to talk on Skype, most likely he would make a joke, answering something like “loud and clear”, “quiet but convincing”, or something else something like that.
However, such questions are quite natural for novice users of the most popular messenger, because in Skype, despite its simplicity and accessibility, there are a lot of interesting and important nuances that cannot be picked up just like that.
Turn on Skype
Before understanding the nuances and features of communication, you need to define some basic concepts. Otherwise, if, for example, you don’t even know how to turn on Skype, there’s no time for talking.
Almost all programs, when downloaded on your computer, place a link to themselves in the Start menu and offer to install their shortcut on the desktop. So, if you have lost the “switch” from Skype, it means that you abandoned the shortcut during installation or accidentally “swept” it from the desktop.
You can and even should look into the notification area (tray) at the bottom right by clicking on the arrow with the hint “Show hidden icons”.
If the famous logo with a white letter S on blue has disappeared from the Start menu, go to Program Files, look for the Skype folder there, and in it the Phone folder, where the file icon with the extension .exe “lives”, which knows exactly how to turn on Skype.
What to choose from the Skype menu
At the top of its window, Skype offers a menu of six items, among which there is the “Help” button, traditional for all programs, where all items are links to the corresponding sections of the official Skype website, with the exception of the “Check Availability” commands. updates" and "About Skype".
Clicking "About Skype" will show you your version number, which may help clarify certain situations. For example, you just can’t “agree” on Skype with a subscriber, but he turns out to have a different modification. This is why you need to check for updates more often.
On each page of the official Skype website, where we get to through the links in the “Help” section, you will receive a detailed and specific answer to any of your questions, but many impatient users are frightened by the prospect of visiting sites when an answer is needed immediately.
But for this there are other menu items, where they will briefly and very clearly explain to us any question, including how to talk on Skype, for which, as you might guess, the “Calls” item is used.
Calls
In order to talk to someone, you need to place the cursor on the contact in the open Skype window (if it is online) and, right-clicking on it, select either the “Call” or “Video call” command. The same can be done by opening the “Calls” menu.
By selecting the “Call” command, you can make a call by clicking on your contact’s phone number if he indicated it in his personal data, however, the call will be paid, which you will guess when Skype offers to top up your account. In addition, here you can make a “Skype call”, that is, but with the web camera turned off, since you can talk on Skype without video, as indicated by the crossed out video camera icon.
At the “Video call” command, “Skype” will open the contact in a separate window and will tirelessly “video call” until the called person answers or you “hang up” by clicking on its image in the red circle below.
If you decide to fork out for a paid call, you can deposit money into your Skype account by using the “Calls to phones” command in the “View” menu or by clicking on the “Dial number” line at the top of the main Skype window. There you can view your account and select the appropriate tariff plan.
How to reach a contact
We figured out how to talk on Skype using the “roundabout” path of clicking on the links in the “Calls” item in the main menu of the program, but you can do it much faster by simply “tapping” the contact twice with the left mouse button. In response, Skype will open the selected interlocutor in a separate window, where the buttons at the top with the camera and handset correspond to the already familiar “Video call” and “Call” commands.
By left-clicking on the contact's avatar, you will be taken to the interlocutor's profile window, where there is an active (link) phone number for the contact. Right-clicking on an avatar will do the same as clicking on a subscriber’s contact in the main window.
The third button at the top with the “Add contacts” prompt will be needed when you need to add another participant to a group conversation on Skype. More on this a little later.
So, we call the contact by clicking either the button with the camera or the command in the Calls menu,” and the window is transformed.
Conversation
The top buttons in the dialog window are no longer there; in the center is the smiling face of a delighted interlocutor, and at the bottom is a toolbar. Clicking the button with the camera promises to “turn on/off” the video call, the button with the microphone will do the same with the sound.
By clicking on the icon with a cross, you can take a photo of an image in Skype, send files or contacts, share your screen, add participants to this call and dial a phone number on the keyboard (dial).
The red circle with a white tube (or just a red tube) is already familiar to us (disconnect connection). The last (or first) callout button with the hint “Show instant messages” in Skype will open a field for entering text, and an icon with a diagram (data on the quality of communication) will report on the quality of the video signal, give recommendations for improving it, and offer to select a web camera and indicate the address of the corresponding page of the Skype website on the Internet.
Above the top edge of the text field at the bottom left, pay attention to the line “via Skype”, clicking on which will show an offer to send an SMS message to your phone, which you can do if you have money in your Skype account.
By pressing the blue button with a paper clip, you can send photos, files and a list of contacts, but all this will go away provided that the interlocutor is online and accepts the files, while text messages, video messages and emoticons (icon on the right) will be sent to the “other side” immediately .
Conversation for three
Ordinary situation. You are talking with a friend, and then one of your friends calls you, who will not be out of place in the conversation, but how can the three of you talk on Skype if the program offers to go to another window for negotiations? This is where the button with a man and a cross at the top right comes in handy. By clicking on it, we can select a third participant from the list of contacts (4th, 5th, 10th, etc.) and include him in the group (button "Add to group" below).
There may be a message that users added to the group “must update Skype to participate in this chat,” and until they do this, the conversation will not happen. The message includes a link that you can click to update your version of the program.
Group organization
You can create a group in advance by going to the “Contacts” menu and selecting the “Create a new group” command.
"Skype" will open a new window called "Empty Group", where you can include participants by selecting them from the list expanded by the familiar button with a cross at the top right. If you click on the arrow next to the group avatar, where it says how many people are already included in the group, the names of the participants will appear in the panel below. If you accidentally get the wrong one, right-click on it and select “Delete user...”.
In older versions of the program, you could simply drag contacts with the mouse into the blue area of the empty group window, but now such an operation only leads to the transfer of the contact information of the selected subscriber to the conversation participants without including him in the conversation.
Once the group has been created, you can start a voice conference by pressing the “Call Group” handset button, or a video conference (the “Video Call” camera button). In addition, you can make a call from the “Calls” menu, as well as from the context menus deployed on the panel at the top of your contacts and group avatar.
As you can see, in the Skype program a video call can be made in almost any corner, so the developers claim: “We are doing everything possible to optimize the performance of Skype...”.
Video message
In the latest versions of Skype, it has become possible to send a video message if the subscriber is not at home or for some reason does not answer the call for a long time. In such cases, Skype offers to transmit a video recording of your appeal. Having agreed (by clicking on the proposal), we find ourselves in the familiar dialogue window, but instead of the interlocutor we see ourselves (and Skype assures you that this is a “good shot”) and three new buttons at the bottom (cancel, record and send a video message). To stop recording, you need to click on the same “Record” button, then, after viewing and listening to the recording, you can re-record it, send it or cancel it.
Sound problems
It happens, of course, that if the interlocutor can’t hear you, your microphone is simply not connected or the plug is inserted in the wrong place, but more often the problems are more serious and deeper.
We already mentioned at the beginning that advice can be obtained from the “Connection Quality Guide” link in the “Help” section, but setting up the microphone in Skype is done in the “Tools” section of the main menu on the “Options” tab, where you can You can also access the “Sound Settings” command in the “Calls” menu item.
In order to understand the microphone, on the “Skype Settings” tab you need to select the “Sound Settings” line, which will open a window where everything is shown and described so clearly that comments can offend even the user who heard the word “microphone” for the first time.
But before messing with the settings, it is recommended to call the default "answering contact" named "Echo/Sound Test Service".
Call Echo and make a call by pressing the handset button. “A cute girl, judging by her voice, will come to the phone and instruct you on further actions, after completing which you will hear everything that Echo “thinks” about your microphone.