How to Set Up Your Skype Name and Password

By Loren Abdulezer, Susan Abdulezer, and Howard Dammond from Skype For Dummies

3 of 9 in Series: The Essentials of Communicating with Skype

Setting up your Skype Name and password is similar to setting up your username and password for other software. Your Skype Name is what other people on Skype see when they contact you. You also use your Skype Name to log on to Skype in combination with a password, so choose a Skype Name that's unique to you and easy to remember.

To establish your Skype Name and password, follow these steps:

Click the Don’t have a Skype Name?

The Create a New Account page opens.
In the Enter Skype Name box, enter the name that you’ve decided to use.

Skype Names must start with a letter and not include spaces. Skype Names also must be between 6 and 32 characters long, including letters and numbers. All Skype Names are converted to lowercase letters, even if you use uppercase letters when you create your account.

What if you have a great idea for your Skype Name but somebody else beat you to it and registered the name on Skype? For that possibility, Skype offers you alternative names to pick from — but also allows you to set one of your own choosing.

Choose a password and enter it in the Password box.

A Skype password must be 6 to 20 characters long and must contain at least one number and one letter. All Skype passwords are case sensitive.

You are asked to enter your password again in a second Password box to make sure that you entered it accurately.

Pick a password that is easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess. A good technique is to pick two short but unrelated words and separate them by some nonalphabetical characters — for example, latte67chair.

Select the check box to accept the Skype End User License Agreement and the Skype Privacy Statement.

Although you agree to the License Agreement when you download Skype, you must check it again when you create an account before you can successfully log on to Skype.
Click Next to continue to another Create Your Account Screen; there, enter your e-mail address.

Entering your e-mail address is optional but recommended. Be sure to fill this in. E-mail is the only way to retrieve a lost Skype password. Also, if you don't have e-mail, you'll have a difficult time making use of features such as SkypeOut and SkypeIn.
Enter your country, region, and city.

This information is optional, but it’s useful when other skypers search for you.