Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger is a very popular instant messenger. However, there are many problems that make users inconvenient. One of the problems that a lot of people are facing is whenever they reformat their computer, all their custom emotions that took years to find are gone! Even if you have all your cute custom emotions at your office computer, it is impossible to manually copy the custom emotions to your home computer.

I found out that there’s a CustomEmoticons folder located at C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Microsoft\MSN Messenger\Random ID\ and thought I can just backup the map.dat file and restore it on another computer to get back the emotions, but replacing the map.dat file doesn’t restore the custom emotions. It’s not as easy as it seems! I’ve also read that renaming map.dat file to GIF or JPG will show the emotions but it doesn’t. This is because map.dat file is encrypted.

What about Yahoo emotions? What if you’re a hardcore MSN user and want to use Yahoo smileys on MSN messenger? I am sure Yahoo Messenger emotions can be found on the net but there’s an easier way to import Yahoo Messenger’s emotion to Windows Live Messenger. Here’s a free tool to make backing up Windows Live Messenger custom emotions and importing Yahoo smileys much easier.

EmoticonMadeEasy is a program that allows you to backup your MSN icons, import/export emoticons, import Yahoo Smileys, import images or icons from local machine and convert them into MSN emoticons, and share your emoticons between computers or accounts, or share with your friends. You can export MSN emoticons on a computer to a single file and then import the file into MSN Messenger on the other computers. Also, you can import Yahoo Smileys into your MSN messenger. It is easy, and it is FREE!!

OK, this program does the backup and importing emotions job automatically and easily. One very doubtful thing you have to do before it can backup or import emotion is you have to enter your REAL MSN account login information. I tried searching in website to see what is the purpose of this requirement but I couldn’t find it. I used a packet sniffer to see what is being sent when I enter MSN login name with password and click the Next button. I can only see that it’s sending information to login.live.com. Then I contacted the author of EmoticonMadeEasy and he got back to me the next day with this explanation “If you are using MSN 7.x or earlier version, you only need to enter login name. However, you need both login name and password for MSN 8.x to encrypt or decrypt data files which contain icon shortcut key and name.”

[ Download EmoticonMadeEasy ]

If you’re comfortable in giving out your MSN login information, there’s another simple tool called ConCon Retriever that is able to give you easy access to your MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger content, which includes custom emoticon (smiley), display picture (avatar/ user tile), background, wink, deluxe display picture (mood/meego/muggin) and dynamic background.

What I like about ConCon Retriever is the ability to display all logged in MSN users on that computer and then save a single file that you like to editable image file. ConCon Retriever has a file called ConDecrypt.exe which I think it is used to decrypt map.dat file.

[ Download ConCon Retriever ]

Technorati Tags: emotions, MSN, smiley, backup, Yahoo