Reply to IM's ..."while offline"

Okay, so I've had it done to me before...I'm IN world and and someone replies to one of my IM's while they are at RL work through their email...boom, i get an IN-world message form their email service.

How is this done??

I'm trying to do it now while I'M at work, I just hit reply, type my message, delete out everything else below so they don't get all of the garbage underneith the message and hit send...but i get an error message saying it's undeliverable? Is there a special trick i'm suppose to do? Stand on my head while giving a peace sign with my left hand? =\

It has been hit or miss with me. Sometimes it works, other times, not so much. Try getting naked, standing on your head, touching your left ear, and eating a grape popsicle. That worked for me last time.

was your reply to an IM that you recently received or an older one?


I'm not sure what the time limit on it is, but generally, the address changes on a regular basis so if you reply to an oldre IM then the link will no longer work.

Besides that, it sounds like you are doing everything correct

That doesn't work in months beginning with an "A"

1. You can only respond to 'fresh' IMs. So after a few days, they get 'stale' and are no longer accepted by LL.
2. Your sending server must send to the right email address, which is a long range of numbers etc. (gmail seems to work fine for me).
3. You should probably reply with plain text mail, not html formatted mails.

ya, just got the IM message this morning. I'm using Yahoo..does that make a difference? I've NEVER actually been able to get one go through..thought maybe it was me and not so much SL??

Also when you hit reply the first part of the email has "xxx xxx" (Avy name) in quotes..should i delete that out so its the bare-bone email?

Thanks Katelicious, i didnt think about the "getting naked" part..I'll try that and see if it helps...oh wait..I'm at work..... =P XD

I have always just done what you do - hit reply, delete everything in the body, type my message, and hit send.

I don't think I have ever had a problem, but since a response back to me is not always called for and therefore not always received, who knows if mine is really going thru or not.

It's hit or miss, even when it's deliverable. I've tried replying to other people while offline and danged if they didn't get it.

This also doesn't work if the person you are replying to crashes and this goes 'offline' themselves. Or if their IM's get capped.

So, you should consider yourself lucky if you get to work at all

Same here. It works most of the time,but sometimes they bounce back to me or the person says they didn't get it. Personally I make sure I have something balancing on my feet as well..That always seems to help.

Yahoo isn't the problem. I've replied to offline IMs from a Yahoo account that I have my alt on, so it's not that.

^^^^

I have no issues with Yahoo either. I used to use hotmail and that worked also.

Do you have to do this in rl or sl?

Pep (Locking the office door and drawing the blinds as I type)

I have done it two ways (hey, get your mind up from the gutter). I have replied to the IM from my hotmail and I have also used Zonkster.com. I still dont know which one works, one of them does.

You are doing it backwards. You need to use your right hand

/me peeks through the blinds at him and shivers

Generally, these work very well for me. I believe the limit is 3 days. Only once or twice have I had anything bounce, and that is because it was older than 72 hours. It seems to be unaffected by the cap.

I can't believe that a decent offline instant messenger hasn't been created. There have been a few lite versions of this game...but why can't someone come up with an instant messenger? Sure - it would have to log you into the game which is fine, but it would send your avatar to your home location once you log in...

FYI....#3 from Damanios' suggestion worked for me. I've never been able to get this to work for me...I tried sending it with plain text mail rather then the standard html and i'm now communicating....booya. I was testing it out with someone IN game while we were both also on YahooIM and there appears to be quite a long lag time before my message actually arrives in-world and the same amount of time before I receive the response back to my email. No I didn't time it...I'm at work, lol. But it was a while..probably about 10-15 minutes before either of us received messages.

I agree..there it would be nice to have a highly watered down IM tool for this.

Zonkster doesn't seem to be reliable lately.
Ajax and (errr the other one???) I don't like that I have to log in my avy INWorld, afraid I might miss notices, transfers, etc... that i couldn't accept or decline?

We're never happy are we! LOL Thanks for the solution to my OP however!!!

Or ending in Y

Replying via email used to work fine for me, but it stopped working at all not long ago. Now I don't even try because I don't expect it to get through.

Sometimes SL's internal mail servers barf. Re-sending usually does the trick so long as it's a fresh IM you're responding to as people have mentioned.

I must admit Phil, it was working good for me all day today once I stopped sending it in HTML. XP

Ooh, I just remembered something- and this MIGHT have something to do with your HTML issue. The SL mail gateway hates special characters. You can only type normal ASCII characters (things that don't require special control codes to enter on a standard english/american keyboard). I sometimes use Google Translate to communicate with non-English speakers and I always have to edit out the special characters from french or spanish messages before they will send.

Well yes, I have about a 25-33% failure rate these days with sending/receiving offline IMs these days. It really sucks. I now both IM and notecard anyone I'm trying to get ahold of, but god knows how many potential customer IMs I'm missing because offlines aren't working well nowadays. Drives one mad.

Ty for that. I'll try it again.