Tips and Trouble Shooting - ICQ for Mac



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ICQ for Mac - Tips and Trouble Shooting

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Common Error Situations

ICQ Keyboard shortcuts

Importing contacts from other ICQs

Sharing your settings between Mac OS X and Mac OS Classic

Common Error Situations

Problem: I don't remember my password.
ICQ offers an easy and secure Password retrieval mechanism. This feature can be used only in certain cases and only using an email address that was entered in the E-Mail field of the ICQ user details. For more information about the password retrieval mechanism,
see The ICQ Password page.

Problem: ICQ quits with a ""Can't find ...lib" message.
This error message is generated when ICQ cannot find one of the libraries necessary for its operation. Make sure that the files Xprt.shlb and Xpcs.shlb are in the same folder as ICQ, along with the folder 'libs' with its original contents from the ICQ installation.

Problem: ICQ displays an error message saying "Error in message database" and does not allow you to login.
When ICQ encounters an error in the message database, it tries to run the database fixer. When this is not possible, ICQ gives up and an error message is displayed. If this happens, first make sure that all of ICQ's files are readable. This means that the are not locked, nor used by another application (perhaps another running instance of ICQ). If this step does not help, you can simply delete the database.
See the Miscellaneous Topics page for more information on ICQ's data files.

Problem: ICQ displays an error message saying "Error in user database" and does not allow you to login.
ICQ's Contact List and user information are stored in a database file on your hard drive. When ICQ encounters an error while reading this file, it tries to repair it. If this action fails, ICQ gives up and displays an error message. If this is the case, you may try one of the following:

If you have logged on to ICQ from this account with ICQ 3.0X, then your Contact List is already stored on the server. You can delete the local user database files, run ICQ and Re-add the account to your Mac. Once the account has been successfully added, ICQ will retrieve the account's Contact List and various security lists (visible, invisible and ignore).
If you have a backup of your ICQ preferences folder, try to use it
If you have old settings from ICQ version 2.0 or earlier, you may run the ICQ Settings Importer and revert to your old settings.
You may remove the relevant folder from your ICQ preferences folder, and re-add the ICQ Number to your computer.

See the Miscellaneous Topics page for more information on ICQ's data files.

Problem: Some actions (e.g., chat, file transfer) are not available (dimmed) in the menu.
In order to try peer to peer connections, ICQ needs some essential data about the other party's internet address. As the internet grows more complex and firewalls abound, more and more users become less accessible for direct communications. In addition, ICQ keeps improving its internet privacy model, and some of the latest versions for PC default to very strict security settings that prevent ICQ for Mac from communicating with them. We expect most of these problems to be solved as newer ICQ versions are released.

Problem: Web browser won't open.
Sometimes, selecting a web link in ICQ won't launch your web browser. If this is the case, make sure that you have selected a default web browser in your internet control panel or in internet config. If you have, a possible problem may be a corrupt desktop database. In this case you may want to rebuild your desktop. Refer to your MacOS documentation for information on the Desktop Database.

Problem: "Add me" from a web page does not work.
If you use Netscape, you may have to configure it to support the "Add me" feature in ICQ's Web communications center. To do this, open netscape's preferences and add the following type to the 'Applications" preference:

MIME type: application/x-icq
Suffixes: .dll, .uin
Application: select ICQ
File type: ICQU

This screen shot shows the preferences panel with the correct information

ICQ Keyboard shortcuts

ICQ for Mac allows you to access almost all its functionality through the keyboard:

All menu items have keyboard shortcuts
Most user interface elements can be navigated with the arrow keys
Most windows feature tab navigation, so that pressing the tab key switches the focused element of the window
ICQ allows you to quickly access items on popup menu buttons. When such a button has the focus (indicated by a focus outline), you can quickly select items by typing their initial first letters, or by moving up and down with the arrow keys.
In the Contact List, you can quickly change the selection by typing the first letters of the name of the contact you want to select. Alternately, you can type the first digits of that contact's UIN.

Importing contacts from other ICQs

If you have a Contact List on another version of ICQ, you may want to import it to ICQ for Mac. Depending on the ICQ client from which you are trying to import, there are several ways do accomplish this task:

If you want to add contacts from one of your ICQ accounts to another, you may simply run two instances of ICQ on your computer and drags contacts from one List Window to the other.
If you want to import a Contact List from Gerry's ICQ® (version d44.1 or lower), simply open the ICQ application, log in and then drag the Contact List file onto the icon of the ICQ application.
For other ICQ clients, you will need to create a text file with the ICQ numbers you wish to import. Once you have this file, you can write an AppleScript script with the following commands (replace "uin" with a relevant ICQ number):

  tell application "ICQ"
    Add UINs (uin, uin...)
  end tell

Sharing your settings between Mac OS X and Mac OS Classic

Although ICQ for Mac 3.0X runs on both Mac OS X and Mac OS Classic, it behaves a little differently on each operating system. This is due to the fact that ICQ stores local files in the System Preferences folder, which is at different locations in OS X and OS Classic. If you alternate between the two operating systems on your computer, you can easily set up ICQ's preferences files to be shared between the two OS versions. Simply create an alias within the preferences folder of one operating system, pointing to the ICQ folder in the preferences folder of the other Operating system.

Example:
If you have two partitions, HD1 and HD2, with Mac OS X installed on HD2, you can do the following:

Find your preferences folder in HD2. For example, of you login to OS X as beitar, this folder is HD2/Users/beitar/Library/Preferences.
Within this folder, create an alias to HD1:System Folder:Preferences:ICQ.
Now both ICQ for Mac OS Classic and ICQ for Mac OS X will use the same databases.


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