Why Are My Contacts Offline When I Know They Are Online?
In order to chat with people who are online, you can click on them in Skype (where they are indicated with a green icon) and then right click to select Call, Send IM or Video Call. However, you are unlikely to attempt to do this with people that are listed as “offline”, which is indicated with a blanked out icon with a green outline.
If Skype is showing a contact as offline rather than online, and you know that the contact is online (for instance, they might have emailed you) there are various things that you can try to resolve the problem.
The first is to check that you are using the most up-to-date version of Skype. You can check for this in the main Skype window – go to Help > Check for Updates and you should soon know if you are using the most recent version or if an update is available.
A second check is rather contentious. Skype’s own support have suggested to users that they remove the entry in their firewall for Skype in order to resolve the problem, with the indication being once the firewall software detects behaviour from the chat software you can assign it privileges for sending and receiving data. However, this overlooks the fact that Skype already has considerable privileges and often uses your computer as part of a P2P network in order to route video chat and voice call data for other users.