SPRUCE CREEK SOUTH COMPUTER CLUB

PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR EMAIL BEFORE FORWARDING

Please don't forward the tons of headers, the massive footers and all of those goofy characters. Are you one who sends this kind of unclean mail to your friends? If you aren't cleaning up your email, it's not very courteous!

This can happen when you use any browser, but is especially related to people who use AOL and CompuServe. The problem most often comes from new or lazy users and many people who rely on the simplicity of AOL and CompuServe. When you get mail from Harry, which had previously been sent to Bill, who forwarded it from Carol. When this happens, there are tons of headers, numerous footers and all sorts of extraneous characters. Can you visualize what I am talking about?

Please take a few seconds before sending mail on to your friends that you want to keep. This will make the next reader's desire to read your mail much easier and enjoyable. Your friends won't need to scroll through endless rubbish with needless characters.

Place your cursor at the beginning of the good text and highlight to the end of the good text. Only highlight what you want to send. Now go to the Edit Menu and select COPY. Your good text is now in the clipboard, but is still has the multiple characters.

Paste the text into the first box on the Web Site: http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/hbuckallen/stripper.html. Now you can select the type of characters you would like to strip out. These include ">", "<", "@", "#", "S", "%", "&", "(", ")", plus others. Now press the "Strip It" button on the bottom of the first box, and your cleaned-up text will appear in the second box below. Now all of the extraneous characters are gone, so make a copy (or cut) and place the info in your clipboard. The new info will replace what was already in the clipboard.

The next step is to go into the WRITE menu of your email program and type in the addresses you want to send the email to, or use you’re your address book. Give the message a subject and then go to the Message Field. It is now time to PASTE. Go back to the EDIT Menu and PASTE. This will transfer your message from the clipboard to the Message Field. Now you are ready to send a clean message to your friends and family, who will be grateful for your effort in sending them a clean email.

Another way of removing those annoying symbols and characters from your email is to use a Windows program called "Cleaner." It should be available from: http://www.jokepad.co.za/cleaner.htm.

You should also remember that using CAPITAL LETTERS means you are yelling. Computer etiquette is to avoid using CAPITAL LETTERS in emails where and when ever possible.