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How do I remove addresses from an email message for printing or forwarding?

Question:

How do I get rid of all the other e mail addresses that a message has been
sent to if, for example, I want to print it or if I want to send it on to more
friends without a page of addresses?

I see this all the time – particularly as I collect humor for the site
ForwardedFunnies.com. Email
that’s been forwarded (and forwarded and forwarded) with long strings of email
addresses added to the top each time. Several page-down’s later I get to
finally read the message.

Dealing with that for forwarding is easy. Printing – not so much. But we
have ways.

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When you forward an email message, that message becomes part of the body of
your new message. That implies that you can edit it to your heart’s content.
Just click on the text you want to change or remove … and change or remove
it. That applies equally well to the body of the message as the headers.

So not only can you remove the list of original recipients, but you can, in
fact, change the text of the message you’re forwarding.

Scary, huh?

In some cases, depending on your email program, the mail you’re forwarding
will not show up in the body of your message, but rather will show up as an
attachment. That’s typically due to mixing email formats – forwarding a “Rich
Text” formatted message as an “HTML” message. Again, depending on the mail
program, you should be able to change the format of your message, or perhaps
select an option to not make attachments of forwarded messages.

“When you forward an email message, that message becomes
part of the body of your new message.”

Printing is more difficult because be the message cannot be edited, or if it
can, the ability to edit may not include the message headers.

Here’s what I do:

  • I tell my mail program to forward the message. It creates a new message with
    the message I want to forward in the body.

  • I select-all in the body of that message (typically CTRL-A will do it), and
    then hit Edit/Copy to copy the entire message text to the clipboard.

  • Then i fire up Microsoft Word (for rich text or HTML mails) or Notepad (for
    plain text mails) and paste in the email message from the clipboard.

  • I edit as I see fit – removing the recipient list, perhaps.

  • Then I can print from within Word or Notepad exactly what I want.

It’s a little cumbersome the first couple of times, but it’s not that
terribly difficult, and gives you total control over what gets printed.

Do this

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6 comments on “How do I remove addresses from an email message for printing or forwarding?”

  1. I need to delete my search history on my “search” bar.how can i do this?when i click “start” I then go to “Search” and a search bar comes out and when I click the down arrow I see my History items how can i delete these?Also items on “Run” bar need to be deleted but i do not knw how a can do this.

    Reply
  2. I have no problem deleting text/addrs/graphics using Outlook Express. Click on Forward and continue to do so until Forward is no longer shown. When Forward is no longer shown you have reached the final page for editing. Simply highlight all text/names/graphics…not wanted and press DELETE.Add new as desired.Always use BCC

    Reply
  3. After clicking on ‘forward’ I usually highlight the text to be removed and press the ‘delete’ key.
    Lately, this method doesn’t work. Highlighting and pressing the ‘backspace’ key works OK but not the ‘delete’ key. Any Suggestions???

    Reply
  4. In the TO box, I use a fictitious name (//HMS@yahoo.com), then in the CC box I type the addresses I want message forwarded to. I delete
    all the addresses in the body of the original message. This way, no addresses are forwarded to a new recipient.

    Reply
  5. The problem is I’m trying to print something for records/documentation. I want to print the email showing the original date, but I DON’T want to show the list of addresses in the bcc field. Any way to do this without having to edit the text from a word doc program?

    Reply

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