Mac Mail forwarding: How to get rid of multiple quote lines?

I get a lot of mail which has been forwarded from person-to-person,
containing those vertical lines in the left column indicating that is
is quoted forwarded material. Some of the messages contain 8-10 of
these lines.

When I want to forward this material to others, I'd like to remove the
vertical lines. I've discovered that keting Cmd-A followed by multiple
keying of Cmd-Opt-left arrow will get rid of some of the lines, but not
all.

Does anyone know of a way I can get rid of all the vertical lines in
mail I am forwarding?

 

Put your cursor to the left of the first character you want to delete, then holding the mouse down, drag to the end of what you want deleted. The area you've selected will turn blue. Let go of the mouse and hit the delete key.

That works on my Mac, don't know if it's the same on a PC.

Jim from Hilton Head

 

Format menu -> Quote Level -> Decrease

I've never used this feature that I can recall, but I believe that's
what it's for.

 

I hadn't heard of the Cmd-Opt-left arrow trick. What I use is Cmd-'
(single quote, next to the Return key). Cmd-opt-' will increase the
quote level. Both commands are also under Format->Quote
Level->Increase/Decrease. Note that you will have to select the part you
want to unquote before using the command.

Also, and this can be very frustrating, if the selection appears with a
'black box' around it and a black X in a circle in the upper right
corner, you may not be able to change what's inside the box (sometimes
you can). It's telling you it's a pasted graphic, I think.

Good luck.

 

You can also select the text then right click and select Quote level from
the contextual menu, then Increase or Decrease.

Keyboard shortcuts:

cmd-' Increase quote level
opt-cmd-' Decrease quote level

 

No, it's telling you that the stuff in the box is formatted with HTML.

Menu/Format/Make Plain Text will take care of it.

Isaac

 

My goodness, JR. What in the world do you think e-mail is *for*?

8^}

Isaac

 

Thanks for the pointer, Issac. I have tried that at times and sometimes
nothing happens to the image. That's why I was thinking it was a graphic.

 

There are some messages I've received where there's one or two of those
lines that won't be removed by using Decrease quote level. I have no idea
why that happens, though.

 

Yes, I had some of those back a few years ago. At the time I thought
that the shortcuts weren't working.

As a workaround I probably copied the lot into TextEdit (using plain
text) and did the massaging there, before copying the results back.

Apple Mail was nowhere near as bad as Outlook in this respect.

 

If you mess around with it you'll likely find that there is a nest
of those round-cornered boxes. Some quirk of html, I imagine.

What I've found sometimes works is to start a "forward" message,
highlight only the desired content, being sure to stay within the
innermost box, then copy and paste into a new message.

 

If you mess around with it you'll likely find that there is a nest
of those round-cornered boxes. Some quirk of html, I imagine.[/QUOTE]

Those vertical lines and the boxes are two different things.

 

Really. Everyone knows Usenet is the place for serious conversation.


--
Wes Groleau

A pessimist says the glass is half empty.
An optimist says the glass is half full.
An engineer says somebody made the glass
twice as big as it needed to be.

 

Those vertical lines and the boxes are two different things.[/QUOTE]

And by copying only the desired content you avoid both of them.

 

Tony Craine you have solved the problem! Thank you four years after you made this post.