Customizing the Animated Emoticons in MSN Messenger 6

MSN Messenger 6 introduced the ability to add your own, user-defined emoticons. Unfortunately, they don’t currently allow you to send animated images. You can specify an animated image as your custom emoticon, but MSN Messenger will only display the first frame of the animation.

MSN Messenger 6 does have eleven built-in animated emoticons, and with a little effort on your part, you can replace them with your own animation.

How It’s Done

The built-in emoticons are saved as G file types embedded in the msnmsgr.exe file. You can customize these emoticons using Reshacker.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Changing the built-in emoticons will only effect your computer. Unless your friends also customize their emoticons, they’ll see the plain-old standard emotions and not your sparkly-new cool emoticons.

Skinning the PNGs

1. Start Reshacker. Open up msnmsgr.exe (this file will most likely be under the MSN Messenger folder. Opening the msnmsgr.exe in the Messenger folder will open Windows Messenger, which is different from MSN Messenger)
2. Find the PNG you want to replace in Resource Hacker.


Finding a PNG in Resource Hacker

3. Go to
   • Actions ->
   • Save Resource as a binary file
   

   Save as a binary file

   • Call it “something.png”.
     It would be best to call the filename whatever the number of the png your saving is, so its easier to identify.
4. Open up an image editing program that will handle PNGs. I used Photoshop but The GiMP and Paintshop Pro work too.
5. Edit the file to whatever you want it to look like in Messenger, save it, then go back to Resource Hacker.
6. Delete it, but make sure you remember the directory number – its between 212 and 1062 – if its not then you are in the wrong place!
7. Then, in Resource Hacker, go to Action -> Add A New Resource in the menu, and enter this:
   • Resource Type: “PNG”
   • Resource Name:”*PNG NUMBER*”
   • Resource Language: “1033″ (without the quote marks)

    

    

    

    

   

   Enter these values

8. Make sure Messenger is fully closed and save the file as “msnmsger.exe” (without quote marks). Your PNG will be skinned.
9. Repeat for each PNG file you want to edit.

The Standard Animated Emoticons

 The PNG number is 900
  The PNG number is 901
  The PNG number is 902
  The PNG number is 903
  The PNG number is 904
  The PNG number is 905
  The PNG number is 906
  The PNG number is 907
  The PNG number is 908
  The PNG number is 909
  The PNG number is 910

Useful Links

• Paint Shop Pro offers a free, 30-day trial
• Adobe Photoshop is a professional image editor. Order it here on Amazon.
• The GiMP is a free program that offers versions for Linux, Mac, OS2, and Windows.