Prepare your start at Skype (2)

If you want to call someone by a telephone you need his/her telephone number. Either you know it or you have to look for it in a telephone book or Internet directory. This is similar to Skype: either you know the Skype name or you have to look for it.
You even could call persons on the phone from your Skype account. But this is not free of charge. Therefore only the search for Skype members is presented. Telephone calls between Skype users are free, worldwide.

If you want to call someone by Skype you should add this person to your Skype address book. For this purpose click on “add a contact” at the bottom of the left column. After having clicked a new window will appear which is as well called “Add a contact”.
Here you may type in either the email address of a person with whom you want to have contact via Skype, or the phone number, the full name or the Skype name. Type in as many details as you know to narrow down the search process.
An alternative way is to type in a detail you know in the field with the magnifier symbol.
In both cases a list of possible “candidates” will appear. If you are lucky the contact you were looking for appears immediately and no other result. Or you receive several results if the search criteria fit to more than one person. Then you have to select. Here is for example the result for the search for “testperson”. Attention: only ten single results will be displayed on one overview, click as well to the next result pages if there are more than ten matches.
If you have found the person you were looking for whom you wanted to have in your Skype address book click on “Add contact” under the person’s name. Another window will appear “Send contact request”. A short text is already prepared in the middle, but you also may type in something different, a more personal message. Afterwards click on “Send request” and the person you have selected will receive this message. Another window will confirm that by “Contact sent to …”. Look for another contact by clicking on “Add another contact” in the corner on the left at the bottom of this new window. Or close it by a click on the X in the top right corner.
If you return to your standard Skype site you will see that the requested contact is now added to your address book. You may add further contacts as described. As long as the contact is not confirmed by the person to whom you have sent the contact request only two question marks appear in front of the name. One in the profile symbol, another is the status symbol. If the contact is confirmed the profile picture of the person will be shown an his/her online status. If the person is available the status symbol will be as green as in front of the “Echo / Sound Test Service”. In this case you can try to call him/her.
Of course you also may get contact requests. They appear on top of your Skype address book column with an orange circle. If you click on it you will receive the request text.
You may then decide if you add the contact to your list, if you ignore it or if you even block it.

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