Tuesday Computer Group

Removing unwanted characters in e-mail before sending on.

You have just received an e-mail message that contains a story, a definition or explanation about something that you think one of your friends or a family member would also like to read so you forward it, WRONG.

Look carefully at the part you want to send on, if it has been forwarded before you will see numerous characters like the these: >>> before each line in the text. An example below:

>>>Now is the

time

>>>for all good men
>>>to come to

the

>>>aid of their country

Needless to say this would be an annoying way to read a story or whatever.

One solution is to select and copy the text and past it into a new message to whoever you want to send it to. Then manually remove each >>> symbol, then edit the text for full line sentences so that the recipient want think bad of you.

Another more sensible option would be to select the text to send on, past it into Wordpad or Microsoft word or whatever word processor program you have. Everyone with a PC has Wordpad, not everyone has Microsoft Word. In either word processor click EDIT then click REPLACE. The first image below is the replace tool for Wordpad the second is from Word.

In either word processor case enter the character to replace, like >, leave the replace with blank then click REPLACE. (the replace button would be activated with an entry in the replace text box) This action will remove all incidents of the > symbol. Now all you need to do is edit the sentences so that reading the text is not a chore.

In the past I have gotten e-mail from a friend in Florida with AOL that has forwarded e-mail to me that had been forwarded at least a dozed or more times. I had to open the message 22 times to reach the page that had one paragraph of text to read. All but 1 page contained a list of all the peoples e-mail addresses that has read this message.

If you send on messages using this procedure the people you send it to will very much appreciate your effort.

The example, above, leaned up will look like this:

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country".

This is far better and easier to read. Image what it would have looked like if the message were two paragraphs.

This Page updated September 17, 2008