I can't seem to find a way to change the tab navigation method. When I'm using a multi-tabbed Kopete chat window, I don't want to have to look at the underlined letter in the contact name and hit Alt+Letter. I should be able to eyeball the window, know the tab I want is third from the left, and hit Alt+3. Why KDE wants to make this so difficult, I'll never understand.

I've looked through systemsettings but haven't yet found a way to change this. Does anyone know how to do it?

What you want isn't directly possible, but you can use the "Activate Next Tab" and "Activate Previous Tab" shortcuts to achieve what you want. Open a chat window > Settings > Configure Shortcuts to set the desired shortcut keys.

That will work for now, but it would be nice in the future to have 9 different "Switch to Tab N" shortcuts to configure. Hard to imagine this hasn't been requested before, but I'll check and if not I'll submit a feature request.

Thank you for your assistance.