Summary: Email programs will often automatically include the text of the original in a reply, and format it slightly differently. Some use blue bars.
The blue vertical lines on the left side of an email, how do you get rid of them? Sometimes you can delete them & sometimes when you try to, the whole email disappears. They are just annoying & tacky looking. We never use to see them & now they are just about on everything!
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The blue lines are your email program attempting to be helpful. Or, rather, the email program of whomever has sent you that message.
Most likely in reply to a message of yours.
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When you reply to a message many email programs have the option of including the original message in the reply, so that the recipient can see just what it was you were replying to. Here's an example of my replying to the original message:
As I said, this is an option in most mailers, and can normally be turned off so as not to quote the original at all. Some mailers will let you control what the quoting style should be, and some do not.
It's controlled by the email program of the person doing the replying.
Now, as to deleting it ... well, on the receiving end as you've seen it can be problematic. Sometimes the email program that created it will do so by using an HTML table, which is very easy to accidentally delete all at once. The silly work-around is to click within the quoted text and then delete pieces of it from within the table. Regardless, the blue line won't disappear until the entire table is gone anyway.
Yep, it's a bit of a mess, and I share your frustration. I do wish that mailers were a little more configurable and sane about how they create quoted replies.
There is one approach that is fairly universal, and universally easy to deal with.
Use plain text.
The blue line style is typically the result of a rich text or HTML formatted email reply. If, instead, the reply is in plain text, it'll look more like this:
Leo
> -- Question --
> I searched on your site first & there was two answers that came up &
> they did not pertain to what I want to know so I am asking you. I have
...
Since it is just plain text, you can edit it to your hearts desire. No, it's not as pretty as the original, but it is under your control.
But once again, this is all a side effect of replying, and it's all under the control of the email program used by the person doing the replying.
Related:
Article C3662 - February 27, 2009
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.
Posted by: Patsy Terrell at April 21, 2009 9:20 AMThe 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.
Posted by: Mike Frerichs at November 18, 2009 9:04 PMAnother 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.
Posted by: Fiantella at December 14, 2009 9:19 AMThere is a much simpler way..simply select the text you wish to forward then click forward and that will eliminate the lines.
05-Jan-2010
05-Jan-2010
Posted by: Even at January 4, 2010 9:05 AM
Removing blue forwarding lines:
Posted by: Toone at January 6, 2010 5:23 PM1 - 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)