New to here, apologies for doing things wrong, I couldn't find this complaint elsewhere. System details at the end.

Story: I have been using Kopete (and others) happily for a few years. Recently I switched to Ubuntu. Something went wrong with the top panel and I removed it and replaced it with a blank one. Unfortunately I have been unable to get it back quite as it was. Any tips on that also appreciated.

One of the things that went missing was the icon from Kopete that becomes animated when a new message comes through. I've been through Kopete menus, eg.
Settings -> Configure -> Behaviour
and tried unchecking and rechecking: "Show system tray icon"
(Other perhaps relevant settings at the end.)

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to have brought the icon back. What I've done instead is create a shortcut to the kopete executable that I found by hunting around which has some but not most of the functionality of the previous icon.

Recently I noticed a more serious problem (that I think did not previously exist): Sometimes I notice that the envelope icon appears next to a contacts name. I think that this is only ever a contact already involved in a conversation. When I click on the contact the new message does not come through - and the envelope icon remains.
I have checked with contacts and messages have been sent.
This problem may only occur with jabber contacts - I'm not certain.

I have also recently discovered that
a) My google-mail account has received the messages, so i can read them from there
b) Often closing and opening the chat window a few times can cause the messages to come through.

Any idea what might be causing this issue and how I might fix it?
Also any idea how I can get the animated icon back to the system tray?

Thanks very much for all help!
Niall


Kopete settings:
Checked:
"open messages instantly"
"group consecutive messages"
"animate system tray icon"

I have combined various contacts: Some of them communicate with different accounts of mine, some use the same contact of mine but different accounts of their own. I have combined across MSN and google-chat/jabber. I have multiple MSN and jabber accounts.

I've also put all messages together into one window with tabs.
I make this window visible on all workspaces (which I switch between a lot).



System information:
I'm using Kopete: Version 0.80.2

KDE 4.3.2
In Ubuntu, 9.10 (karmic)
GNOME: 2.28.1
kernel: 2.6.31-20-generic
Nautilus 2.28.1

LSB Version: core-2.0-amd64:core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-amd64:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-amd64:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-amd64:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-amd64:core-4.0-noarch:cxx-3.0-amd64:cxx-3.0-noarch:cxx-3.1-amd64:cxx-3.1-noarch:cxx-3.2-amd64:cxx-3.2-noarch:cxx-4.0-amd64:cxx-4.0-noarch:desktop-3.1-amd64:desktop-3.1-noarch:desktop-3.2-amd64:desktop-3.2-noarch:desktop-4.0-amd64:desktop-4.0-noarch:graphics-2.0-amd64:graphics-2.0-noarch:graphics-3.0-amd64:graphics-3.0-noarch:graphics-3.1-amd64:graphics-3.1-noarch:graphics-3.2-amd64:graphics-3.2-noarch:graphics-4.0-amd64:graphics-4.0-noarch:qt4-3.1-amd64:qt4-3.1-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release:

For the missing system tray you will likely need to add the System Tray widget to the panel.

For the messages issue, try running Kopete from the console, and look for any error messages it is showing when you try to view messages. Note that you may need to simply double click on the contact to show the messages also.