3. Using Trillian
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3.1. The Contact List
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Trillian incorporates contacts from every supported chat medium into one easily managed contact list. Contacts that are stored on the medium's server will automatically be imported into your Trillian contact list.
In most cases you will also be able to control your plugins from the contact list.
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Sorting the contact list
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The Contact List can be sorted by status*, by medium, or alphabetically (ascending or descending). To sort the contact list, right-click the list and choose "Sort". Choose what type of sort is desired. Sorting by medium will order your list by chat medium. Sorting by status places users available for chat higher up on the contact list while those that are unavailable or offline will appear towards the bottom.
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Adding a contact
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Here are some ways to add a contact:
- Click the (+) Add Contact button at the top of the contact list.
- Right-click in your contact list and choose Add..
- While in a conversation, click (+) Add Contact
A dialog box will appear. Choose the group that the contact should be placed in. If a new group is needed, click "Create New Group". Then choose the contact's chat medium. (NOTE: AIM and ICQ use the same option. For either AIM or ICQ contact information, choose "AIM&ICQ". On the next screen, enter EITHER a screen name or ICQ#.) The next screen will ask for the contact information. (NOTE: For Y!, there is a box to send the contact a notification message.) For all mediums, click the "Add Buddy" button or the contact will not be added.
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Deleting a contact
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A contact can be removed from the Contact List a few ways.
- Select the contact pressing the Delete key.
- Right-click a contact and choose Remove Contact
- Select the contact and click the "Remove Contact" button on the contact list.
Trillian Pro users have the added option of selecting more than one contact at a time to delete. To do so, either Ctrl+click to highlight additional contacts or Shift+click to select all a consecutive group of contacts.
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Meta Contacts
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What is a Meta-Contact?
A Meta-Contact is a contact list organizational tool normally used to consolidate several accounts associated with one individual. For example, if "Arthur" was on AIM, MSN, ICQ and IRC, all of those accounts combined into a single Meta-Contact entry so that his status can be determined by looking only at one entry, rather than 4.
How do I create a Meta-Contact?
Before beginning, all of the desired accounts must exist in the contact list. Then:
- Select by Ctrl+clicking on each account.
- Right-click the selected set and choose "Create Meta-Contact".
- A box will ask for a name to call the Meta-Contact (it can be anything since it's local-only).
- That's it!

Once finished, the Meta-Contact can be placed in a group or left in it's own group.
Questions:
Q: Why does it open and close all the time?
A: The MetaContacts are set to "auto-expand" by default. This allows them to only show their contents when you mouse over them so that they don't always take up precious space on your contact list. You can turn this off and have it behave more like a group by going to Preferences->Contact List and unchecking "Auto-expand Meta-Contacts".
When Auto-expand is turned off, to expand (or compact) a Meta-Contact, click on the icon next to the Meta-Contact name. To send a message to a Meta-Contact, double-click directly on the name.
Q: Does the account order inside of a Meta-Contact matter?
A: Yes it does. When you double-click a Meta-Contact to send a message, Trillian will determine which account is used based first on the order that the account appears within the Meta-Contact and second on the availability of the account.
To set the order or preference, drag accounts within a Meta-Contact just like you can in a normal contact. Put the preferred account at the top of the list and it will become the default account. If the preference changes, re-order the accounts within the Meta-Contact. When you double click on the metacontact now, it will first look at the order of the accounts within the Meta-Contact. If the preferred account is not available (the user is away or offline on that account) then the first available account will be used.
To manually override the default account, right-click on the Meta-Contact and choose "Send Message to". A listing of all accounts for the Meta-Contact will appear to select from.
Q: What if I want to send it to an account other than what Trillian picks, do i have to reorder it everytime?
A: No. A Meta-Contact behaves like a group, so you can always click on the sub-entries and use them like before
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Exporting the contact list
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You can export the Trillian contact list to other installations of Trillian by simply moving the "Buddies.XML" file.
Copy the file C:\Program Files\Trillian\users\default\Buddies.XML* and put it in the same place on the new installation. All of your contacts and groups will be moved.
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