E-mailing 101

It appears that it is time once again for a lesson I call, E-mail 101.  This week alone, I have received several e-mails that required either A) half a dozen or more mouse clicks to open multiple attachments, B) scrolling down through hundreds of prior email addresses from multiple forwarding actions, or C) attempting to read misspelled words, strange punctuation marks and spaces in the middle of words and phrases and embedded messages from unknown people who forwarded the original message without editing it.

The tips I am about to give you are not my own.  They were compiled and fine-tuned by a fellow Georgian named Cal Hendrix.  Cal had one of the best websites I ever visited.  The site is no longer there, unfortunately, but it had lots of neat links to pictures, games and wisdom.  Cal died on June 11, 2007, and even though I never met the man, I was deeply saddened by his passing.

I’m going to borrow only a few of Cal’s e-mailing tips, so that I can show you how to ‘clean up’ an e-mail prior to forwarding it.  I will underline keyboard keys, so that you know exactly which ones to depress.  It is really quite simple, because you only have to use six keys on your keyboard: Ctrl, A, C, V, Shift and Delete. 

First up: How to copy and paste.

If you want to forward an attachment that is essentially a text document with no video, audio or still pictures in it, it is easiest and best to open the actual attachment (go through all those mouse clicks until you get the genuine message) and copy/paste it into either your word processor or a new, blank e-mail that you are creating.  I prefer to paste into a blank Microsoft Word document, because then I can edit and spell-check it prior to converting it to e-mail message format using the same copy/paste procedure.                   

Here is how to copy/paste any text to or from e-mail and Word.

1.      First, you'll need to select the text you wish to copy. You do this by putting your mouse cursor at the first character you want to copy and, holding down the left mouse button, drag the cursor to the last character you need copied. As you drag, you'll notice everything gets highlighted (selected).

2.      Next, simultaneously depress ctrl plus C for a moment and the selected text will be copied.  You wont see it, but it is on your clipboard for you to use.

3.      Finally, move your cursor to the area in your new document where you would like to insert the text. Then, simultaneously depress ctrl plus V and the text will appear on your screen.  You can now work with it in its new position.

That's it. The steps are basically the same for any copy/paste procedure you need to do.  Remember, you can copy/paste from e-mail to Word, or from Word to e-mail the same way.  If the text includes a link--that blue, underlined text--to a video or article, it will usually carry over to the new message for you.            
If you have a really long area of text that you want to copy/paste, here is another way to handle it.  

Place your cursor at the first character you want selected and, while holding down the Shift key, scroll down until you can click just beyond the last character you want selected. It's sometimes easier to follow this procedure than to make selections by dragging, especially when you’re wrestling with a lengthy document, and you only want to copy/paste part of it.  I can't remember the number of times the area I wanted to stop selecting at zipped right by me on a document! 

(Want to try the shift key trick on the above paragraph?  Position your cursor before the P in Place, depress and hold the shift key, and replace your cursor beyond the ! at the end of the paragraph.  Watch the whole paragraph go white-on-black. You can now either right click to get a cut/copy/paste menu, or use the ctrl plus C to copy it.) 

Another fun way to use the Shift key is adding to an existing selection. Let's say you select an area of text and you came up short of what you really needed. Rather than trying to re-select the whole thing, try this.  While the partial text is still highlighted, just depress the Shift key and click your mouse where you would like the selection to end. (You can also shorten a selection by doing this too.)  After you have used the Shift key to get your text selected, follow the previous steps to copy/paste.

Finally, if you have that lengthy text and you want to copy every word of it, (you can edit it later for spelling and other tidbits you want to remove) that is the easiest thing to do. Just depress ctrl plus A on your keyboard to highlight the entire text.  Then depress ctrl plus C to copy it.  Lastly, place your cursor in your new message body and depress ctrl plus V, and it will appear there.  Remember that you have to press ctrl and hold it down while pressing the other key.

Once you do this a few times you will see how easy it is... took me a year to learn it, trying to read these fancy tutorials on the net! That's why I'm trying to keep this very basic. 

We have one final step to cover: Cleaning up your forwards.
 
That is, let’s remove all those former e-mail addresses of everyone who got copies of the message previously, and delete all those >>> marks in front of each line of text and the weird punctuation or letters in the middle of words.  You should try to do this in every message you decide to forward.  It not only respects the privacy of others, it also makes it easier to get to the meat of the message.  It is so quick and easy to do that you should make it a “must do” before you send any e-mail.  Here is the procedure.

1.      Click on the Forward button on your upper menu. (You won’t have to do this for messages where you used the copy/paste procedure.  You already got rid of all the garbage before you transferred the text.)

2.      Put in all your e-mail addresses at the top of the message, using the Bcc:, and put your cursor in the text box.

3.      Using the same technique you used to copy/paste, highlight any text you want to get rid of, such as those lengthy e-mail addresses from prior forwards.  You might have to do this in groups, especially if the texts are in different fonts. 

4.      Depress the Delete key on the keyboard. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all unwanted text in your message, including ‘>’ and ‘!’ and all those other strange symbols that get added whenever a message is forwarded.

5.      Use a spellchecker under Tools on the top menu bar to correct spellings.

6.      When you have only the text that you want in your message, send it in the normal manner.

If you get a message, or an attachment in a message, that has vertical blue lines to the left of the text, you can use the copy/paste method to get rid of those, too.  Merely select the text in the message--the blue lines wont be highlighted--and copy/paste them into a new blank message.  I don't know about you, but I hate those blue lines.
There you have it.  If you follow these simple steps with any message, you will speed up the entire process, too.  Uploads and downloads will be much faster, and no one will be forced to wade through all the junk to find the gem.

Now, do yourself a favor and copy/paste this message into your word processor, make your own document with the title “E-mail Tips” and keep it for future reference.  “Try it – you’ll like it.”
Note: If you want to practice these techniques, once you have copied and pasted the entire message into a word processor document and closed it, reopen it and highlight a paragraph and copy/paste it below.  That’s right, copy this paragraph, move your cursor down below this area, and then paste the same paragraph in.  When you finish, just close the document again, only this time, when the pop up asks if you want to ‘Save Changes’, click ‘No’.  Only the original text will remain in your saved document.