Comments for What are these blue lines on the left of my email?

Comment from Joat on 2011-07-09

2011-07-09T19:49:54Z

Blue lines are marking original quotes from forwarding or replying to messages.

They are really, in Outlook anyway, a
Border around text with only the left side of the border defined. Multiple ones are nested within each other and appear to be difficult to remove ... But Noooo

Assuming you are using Word as your Outlook editor (the default!!), you can remove them simply by selecting the portion of text highlighted by the blue line, Select FORMAT ==>BORDERS AND SHADING, and select NONE.

Note: You must select all of the text highlighted to make it work.

If there are multiple nested lines, select the leftmost one first, and work your way to the right.

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Comment from Diana on 2011-07-04

2011-07-05T01:21:50Z

Copying and pasting into a new email appears to work except pictures are lost.
How do you get rid of blue lines without losing the pictures in Outlook 2003?

The process outlined in the article does just that.

06-Jul-2011

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Comment from Mike Frerichs on 2011-02-15

2011-02-15T21:24:50Z

Found another solution, on Martha's Web, that seems to work for me in Outlook 2003 using Word as the editor:
Click "Forward" to create an editable version of the e-mail.
Hover your mouse near the top of the leftmost blue line so that the table symbol appears.
Click on the table symbol - this will highlight all content in the table.
On the menu click Table | Convert | Table to Text...
In the popup window, make sure "Paragraph marks" and "Convert nested tables" are checked - these are the defaults on mine.
Click OK.
All other header stuff, and any little pieces of blue lines can now be deleted as you would any text.

Now having said that, the "Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Del, Ctrl+V" solution that others have posted here also works for me and is even easier. :-)

Thanks, everyone, for the solutions.

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Comment from Lorna on 2011-02-08

2011-02-08T23:31:23Z

Out of all of these, the only one that worked was by Joe Read at March 3, 2009 9:01 AM. Thank you.

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Comment from praveen on 2010-05-28

2010-05-28T18:02:38Z

voyellaahhhhh..........its working....thank u so much....

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Comment from PJK on 2010-05-12

2010-05-12T10:11:40Z

Toone's response of Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Del, Ctrl+V is the one that worked for me. Thanks, Toone.

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Comment from Toone on 2010-01-06

2010-01-07T01:23:24Z

Removing blue forwarding lines:
1 - With received email open press forward button.
2 - With cursor anywhere then:
Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Del, Ctrl+V
3 - Lines are Gone.
(copy and paste excludes the lines)

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Comment from Even on 2010-01-04

2010-01-04T17:05:49Z

There is a much simpler way..simply select the text you wish to forward then click forward and that will eliminate the lines.

That only works in a few email programs, certainly not all.

05-Jan-2010

Yep. Or remove the hard drive and install it on some other machine.

05-Jan-2010

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Comment from Fiantella on 2009-12-14

2009-12-14T17:19:09Z

Another way is by deleting all the formatting. Using MS Outlook, Click on Format, Style and Formatting, on the right panel, click on Clear Formatting. This will clear formatting and leave the pictures.

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Comment from Mike Frerichs on 2009-11-18

2009-11-19T05:04:56Z

The blue lines have bugged me for a long time so I finally spent some time playing with them tonight and found an answer that, at least for me, is acceptable if not perfect. I use Outlook for e-mail and Word (2003) as my editor. I found that if I place my cursor somewhere in the text that has the blue line beside it and then, on the menu bar, click on Format, Borders and Shading, and then on the None box, the blue line will disappear. Each verticle blue line must be removed individually, so thats four mouse clicks per blue line - a little pain but not bad. I also found that sometimes, but not always, if I place the cursor too far down in a section it doesn't work. It always worked, though, if I placed the cursor within the first few lines of text near the top of a blue line.

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Comment from Patsy Terrell on 2009-04-21

2009-04-21T16:20:23Z

Just save your document as a text file and it will delete the blue line. Then you can resave as a word document and it will be gone.

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Comment from Syed Jalaluddin on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T11:16:27Z

Hi Leo,
I have red the article, thanks for the info.
I would like to know " how to delete the mailer info while forwarding the same mail to others"?
For Eg: i have got the Animatted or some pictures mail with the fields " forwarded form jjjjj@com" , and at the end of mail "Thanks & regards XYZ". i want to replace this with my name.

Thaks and Regards,

Syed

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Comment from Bill Short on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T20:45:50Z

On the reply or forward click Format\Plain Text and then Format\HTML (or Rich Text). The lines will be gone.

That assumes you have those options available in your mail program.

- Leo
04-Mar-2009

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Comment from John Schneider on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T19:49:05Z

Stripper, as Jim says above, is the way to go.

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Comment from Jim on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T18:51:44Z

Why don't you try this free download--it will clean up all of it:
http://www.papercut.com/emailStripper.htm

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Comment from Juli on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T17:12:58Z

I use stripmail to clean up my emails before I send them on.

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Comment from Joe Read on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T17:01:47Z

When I forward an email that has come to me with "the dreaded blue lines," I first click on "reply" which gives me an editable version, and then highlight the text and or graphics that I wish to forward. I then right-click and select "cut" -then right-click again and "Select All" and delete. Now I can paste back into the body of the email the part I cut, and the lines and any other artifacts are not there. Easy and fast to do.

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Comment from Ross Guistino on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T17:01:31Z

Your solution to reply in plain text is a good one, however, it does not address those emails with graphics in them. If you wish to forward said email to a friend, you can't forward it as plain text otherwise you'll lose the graphic.

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Comment from Kitty A. on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T16:48:35Z

I also highlight the body of the message and copy/paste directly into a new email. It doesn't copy the blue lines. I then put my own email address in the "To" field and put everyone I want to send it to in the "Bcc" field. This cleans up the email and removes all those addresses in one step.

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Comment from Cindy Baalbergen on 2009-03-03

2009-03-03T16:27:46Z

Often I copy, paste the whole message into Word using 'paste unformatted text'. Then recopy/paste into a new e-mail message to send on. That seems to get rid of many things and allows you to edit to your heart's content. It only takes seconds to do. ~

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