Navigating touch-tone and voicemail systems

Some of the SkypeOut calls you make may be to automated services that require you to press the touch-tone keypads of your phone. Because you’re calling from a computer, what do you do when the automated voice says, “Press 1 for Yes and 2 for No”? No problem! Skype provides you with a virtual keypad called a dial pad (see Figure 8-10) found on the Dial tab. If your Dial tab is not visible in the main Skype window, choose View➪View Dial from the Skype main menu.
To make dialing on a SkypeOut call even easier, you can copy a phone number residing in any document, such as an email, and paste it directly into the Skype Dial tab. Sometimes phone numbers have parentheses surrounding the area code. These will not cause you any problems. SkypeOut lets you call vanity numbers, which are phone numbers that have a matching word or acronym on the dial pad of a touchtone phone. For example, to order tax forms from the Internal Revenue Service, you can call 1-800-TAXFORM (1-800-829-3676). On the Skype Dial tab, you can enter 1-800-TAX-FORM and click the green call button. Skype then places a SkypeOut call to the phone number 1-800-829-3676. The next time you need a tax form, you know whom to call!