Custom Emoticons

For MSN, the most popular Instant messaging services software, to install and use custom emoticons is easy to do.
Click the emoticons pack you want to download (also called msn smileys, msn smilies and msn emoticons). After you have downloaded the msn emotions pack you want you then install the msn emoticons into MSN Messenger 7.0 by following these steps

First, save the msn emoticons onto your computer by running the downloaded software. Second, After you have extracted the emoticons install them into MSN Messenger 7 by doing the following

1. Open the main Messenger window.
2. Click the 'Tools' menu and select 'My Emoticons'
3. Click 'create' in the Emoticons dialogue box
4. Click 'Find image' and select the directory you saved the emoticons into
5. Type a shortcut key that you can use in your conversations that will display the msn emoticon
6. Type a name for your msn emotions

For Tencent’s QQ, the dominant Chinese IM software, the procedures are quite the same.
Note that it’s not always true that custom emoticons are packed. Actually each picture with a BMP/JPG/GIF etc ending can be used as custom emoticons as long as you paste the file into the designated destination. If your IM friend sends you an emoticon and you want to save it and use it later, right click the picture and click “ Save and Add to Emoticons group “.