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
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.
Posted by: Kitty A. at March 3, 2009 8:48 AMYour 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.
Posted by: Ross Guistino at March 3, 2009 9:01 AMWhen 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.
Posted by: Joe Read at March 3, 2009 9:01 AMI use stripmail to clean up my emails before I send them on.
Posted by: Juli at March 3, 2009 9:12 AMWhy don't you try this free download--it will clean up all of it:
Posted by: Jim at March 3, 2009 10:51 AMhttp://www.papercut.com/emailStripper.htm
Stripper, as Jim says above, is the way to go.
Posted by: John Schneider at March 3, 2009 11:49 AMOn the reply or forward click Format\Plain Text and then Format\HTML (or Rich Text). The lines will be gone.
04-Mar-2009
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
Posted by: Syed Jalaluddin at March 4, 2009 3:16 AMJust 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 PM