Help managing group IMs, please?

This is probably a simple fix, but for the life of me, I can't find a clear answer for the problem:

I'm in a number of groups, some of which have VERY active group IM sessions. I'm being constantly flooded with lines of text on my screen, which is very distracting. Hitting "close" for the individual groups in the IM box does no good. As soon as the next group member inputs something, I get it anyway. I see notifications that "[this person or that person] has left this session", but I haven't figured out how to do that.

I have none of my groups set as active, but this is going on constantly, anyway. So, here's my question - short of simply removing myself from the groups in question, is there any way to block their IMs when I don't want to listen anymore? If there's an answer for this on the web site or in the inworld help, I've not been able to find it.

Thanks in advance from a semi-clueless newbie.

I think if you go into busy mode that you wont receive group IMs. I have asked for the ability to shut them all off or decide which ones will get through. The group IMs can be distracting when you're talking to friends, building, carrying out an event etc. I made a feature suggestion about this here /13/15/162735/1.html

When you open your IM window and you have chat going on you get two windows - one nested inside the other. Every IM you get (whether from group chat or an individual) will open up a new 'nested' window. You know the little X you use to close the IM window? Don't hit the big one - hit the little one inside it. That closes the active nested window. The other people in the group will get the 'this person has left the session notice'.

Pain in the bum when you're in a big chat with someone and didn't get their name or something and close *their* window by accident instead of the overall IM window (closing that won't close any of your open chat dialogs - you're still *in* them - but it will stop the individual session that's bothering you). Kinda like... hmm, closing a tab in firefox, or a document in photoshop, or word before that version that started opening documents in new windows.

Was that what you meant?

Well, thanks for the response. I was sure there was some toggle I was missing or something. What a drag: From what you're saying, it's an all or nothing proposition - either you silence everyone, or you silence no one. Makes me want to stop supporting various groups, just to get some peace when I'm trying to have a conversation. Guess I'm off to the "feature suggestion" forum next, to add my voice.

Now, since there's no way to selectively shut off group IMs, what does it mean when it says "so and so has left this session"? Does that just mean they've logged off?

Thanks again.

Edit: Oops, didn't see Erin's response before I wrote the above. Thanks. I'll try that, too. Hopefully, that will do the trick. Can't log in to test it at the moment because my machine has other work to do for a little bit, and with SL's demand for almost 100% of my CPU cycles...

If you have the scrolling up the screen text displayed, there is no way to stop IMs from appearing there along with chat from the people in your vicinity. It's hard to believe that this is the case, but it is.

You can open the chat history window, which stops both IMs and local area chat from appearing in the scrolling up the screen chat display.

You can keep the IMs from appearing in the chat history window in the Preferences menu, Communications tab, Include IM in Chat History checkbox. Leave the box unchecked.


This will give you a chat history window with local area chat and no IMs.

If you are a normal member of open join group that has a lot of chat that you like sometime and not at others then you can actually leave the group when you don't want the group chat to bother you and rejoin when you want to read it. This doesn't feel right at all, but it does work.

You leave a session by closing a particular group chat window.

The information in the F1 help you see in the inworld browser is out of date; the F1 help doesn't have the communications tab on it at all. This is typical of LL; they go to the bother of implementing an inworld Mozilla browser and then don't let us use it except in a teeny space in our profiles and don't even take the time to keep the Help info for new users complete and up to date.

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I"m just trying to figure out a better way than my usual approach below....

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Go to Preferences, Communication tab, and uncheck "Show IMs in chat history", if needed.

Open the chat history window.

Open the IM window.

Tear off any sessions you want to read by doubleclicking the Tear Off icon near the top right of an IM session's subwindow.

Close the main IM window.

Don't open the IM window till you want to. Close it if you don't like what you see.


If you do decide to open the main IM window again, tear off the chat session you want to see, then closed the main IM wndow again.

Thanks again for y'all's help. Looks like closing the particular session helps a lot. At least I was able to carry on conversations tonight without being driven slowly insane.