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HOW-TO: Clean Up Forwarded Messages

David A. Gray, MBA
Chief Wizard, WizardWrx

We all regularly receive email messages that have been forwarded one or more times, sometimes with unwanted artifacts in the message body. With the help of your favorite word processing program and the Windows Clipboard, you can quickly and easily remove these artifacts.

These artifacts come in two forms.

Blue Reply Lines may adorn the left margin.
Greater Than Symbols - > may adorn the left margin.

This article shows you how to remove both kinds most of the time.

Blue Reply Lines

Blue lines look like Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 - Blue Reply Lines in a forwarded message look like this.

In about a minute, you can use your favorite word processing program to remove the ugly blue lines by following these eight quick steps.

Select (highlight) the text from which you want to remove the lines.
From the Edit menu, choose the Copy command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the letter C, to copy the text into the Windows Clipboard.
Open a blank document in your favorite word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, or even WordPad, which is in the Accessories group on your Start Menu.
From the Edit menu, choose the Paste command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the V key, to paste the text into the blank document.
Select (highlight) all the text again by holding down the CTRL key while you press the A key or by choosing Select All from the Edit menu.
From the Edit menu, choose the Copy command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the letter C, to copy the text into the Windows Clipboard.
Open a blank message in your mail program, such as Outlook or Outlook Express.
From the Edit menu, choose the Paste command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the V key, to paste the text into the blank message.

Your finished message should look something like Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 - Clean message looks like this.

Greater Than Symbols - >

Though less common today, the greater than symbol - > still appears from time to time in forwarded messages. They look like Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 - Greater Than Symbols - > in a forwarded message look like this.

The process for removing these is almost identical to the process that is used to remove the blue line.

Select (highlight) the text from which you want to remove the greater than symbols.
From the Edit menu, choose the Copy command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the letter C, to copy the text into the Windows Clipboard.
Open a blank document in your favorite word processing program, such as , or even WordPad, which is in the Accessories group on your Start Menu.
From the Edit menu, choose the Paste command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the V key, to paste the text into the blank document.
From the Edit menu, choose the Replace command. In Microsoft Word, or even WordPad, which is in the Accessories group on your Start Menu.
In the Find text box, enter >> - two greater than symbols followed by a space.
Leave the Replace text box blank.
Click the button marked Replace All to clear the greater than symbols from the text.
Select (highlight) all the text again by holding down the CTRL key while you press the A key or by choosing Select All from the Edit menu.
From the Edit menu, choose the Copy command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the letter C, to copy the text into the Windows Clipboard.
Open a blank message in your mail program, such as Outlook or Outlook Express.
From the Edit menu, choose the Paste command, or hold down the CTRL key while you press the V key, to paste the text into the blank message.

This procedure may leave line breaks at undesirable places, so it is a good idea to skim the message and fix any that do not belong.

Disclaimer

We have done our best to make these materials accurate based on information and experience as of the date they were posted. However, since vendors change the way software works, sometimes without notice, we cannot guarantee that any recommendation we make today will work as expected in the future.

This material is supplied as is and without warranty. We specifically disclaim any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular use.

You are responsible for evaluating the suitability of the materials for your intended use and for the consequences of your use of them.

Use at your own risk.

Last Updated 21 September 2008