MSN Emoticons for MSN Messenger are very popular, and people are often tricked into downloading spyware or similar in their effort to get more. However, creating your own emoticons for MSN is easy, and in fact, it is built into MSN Messenger version 7.5. Therefore I have written down how to create your own msn emoticons.
Here is how you do it.
Download an image that you want to use as an emoticon. It can be any image, just remember where you save it. The image you download will resize itself for MSN, however, if you wish to use an animated gif file (for those animated emoticons) you MUST use a file that is smaller than 150 kb, otherwise MSN Messenger will tell you it is too large. (This tutorial shows how to resize animated GIF files for MSN Messenger.)
Start up MSN Messenger 7.5, and double-click on someone in your contact list. The same way you would would do if you were about to send them a message. However, don’t send them a message, not yet anyways. You will see a little happy face next to a large letter A, this is what you normally use to send an emoticon.
Click on this, then select “more” from the menu that pops up.
Click the “Create” Button
Click on the “Find Image” Button.
Now, browse to the image you downloaded, and select it. If you have a good animated gif it will turn out to be larger than a non moving image in most cases as the emoticon feature of MSN was designed mainly for smileys. So, in most cases you will probably prefer the animated gifs. (Note, not all gif’s will turn out well. There are ways around this but that is a tutorial for another time.)
Create a keyboard shortcut for the emoticon. MSN allows a maximum of 7 characters. I strongly suggest you mark your emoticons in some way so you cannot type them by accident. For example:
(funny)
*funny*
{funny}
[funny]
Putting brackets or similar symbols around the name prevents you from having emoticons embedded in the middle of your words.
Now, just click “OK” and you are done! You have now added a new emoticon to MSN
Update: By request, I have written a followup article on how to resize the images that are too large. Check out how to resize animated gif’s for MSN emoticons.
What does — mean?
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Comment by hikerbabe — March 31, 2006 @ 2:02 pm
When MSN resizes the image it becomes too small. I want to have bigger emoticons. How can I do that?
Comment by p. — May 6, 2006 @ 1:06 pm
[...] And it is 136 kb! That is small enough! Now all you need to do is import this new animated gif into MSN as a new emoticon as shown the earlier creating animated MSN emoticons tutorial. « Neville Longbottom uses Amazon.com [...]
Pingback by George Walford » Animated MSN Emoticons - how to resize them. — June 1, 2006 @ 11:23 am
[...] I wrote before on how to Create your own animated MSN emoticons and I wrote a follow up by request on How to resize gif’s to under 150 kb for MSN emoticons. However, some people have been requesting access to just the raw emoticons themselves, that is, some of the ones that I have made that are already animated, and already under 150 kb. Well, here are a few of those emoticons. (Note they will not appear the same size in MSN as they do on this page - remember MSN changes the size of these images when they are imported!) [...]
Pingback by George Walford » Under 150 Kb MSN Emoticons — August 10, 2006 @ 11:58 am
i can’t get my msn emoticons 2 move?????
Comment by kc — September 3, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
MSN forces the size of the emoticons, so you can’t make them larger than a certain amount, it won’t allow that.
To get the emoticons to move, you must start with an animated gif file, that is, and image that is already moving. This Tutorial shows you how to resize animated gif’s to make them into emoticons.
Comment by George Walford — September 7, 2006 @ 6:46 pm
[...] My previous posts on creating emoticons and how to resize animated gifs for MSN, proved to be quite popular. So here are a few MSN Emoticon images that are under 150 kb in size, and while they all look like they are different sizes here, they will import properly into MSN. And sure, some of them look goofy, but they work really well as animated emoticons in MSN [...]
Pingback by George Walford » More preformatted emoticons. — March 14, 2007 @ 4:25 pm
I have a GIF which I wish to turn into a smiley. However When I do, the size (dimensions) of it are really small. The actual image I am uploading is 100*100px. I have tried uploading larger sized images too but in MSN it always appears really small. Do do I make it appear bigger within MSN Messenger?
Comment by Aj — May 10, 2007 @ 2:43 am
how come when i add in a picture even though its only 5 kb msn shrinks it?
Comment by 12345 — October 18, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
When ever i try to put a emotion smiley from a website onto msn it always makes the emotion small, and yet i can get other emotions the same size as what i want mine to be, from other people. but when i try to put my emotions on they are always the smallest size (not kb wise. viewing size)
Comment by mark — December 16, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
That so cool that they show you how to make new faces!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Comment by Barbie — September 4, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
hey does anyone no how to animate the emotions????????
Comment by .... — September 28, 2008 @ 9:42 pm