How do I do remove quoting characters from "Replies""?

[Rafael Montserrat]

OS 10.4.10
Ibook G4
1.5 GB Ram
Entourage 11.3.2

Hi,

In "reply and forward²-"use quoting characters when forwarding² check box,
I've left the box unchecked, but I still get quoting characters in my
replies. Does that preference mean /only/ when forwarding, or also when
Replying? I don't want quoting characters in replying. which I use much
much more than forwarding. How do I do remove quoting characters from
"Replying"?

Also, If I write to a NG and use HTML, will the post arrive in ³Plain Text²
(which seems to be the norm) in NGs, or will it screw things up at the NG
end?

Thanks, Rafael

 

[Jolly Roger]

I don't want quoting characters in replying.

Why not? I certainly wouldn't want to get an email from someone where
my own text is intermingled with their text with no indication which is
which. Yuck! How confusing that would be!

Also, If I write to a NG and use HTML, will the post arrive in ³Plain Text²
(which seems to be the norm) in NGs, or will it screw things up at the NG
end?

That depends on the news reader used by each person viewing your post,
which isn't something you can control. Some news readers do not view
HTML posts well, resulting in a mix of raw HTML tags and text, which is
quite hard to read.

You may also want to consider that HTML messages take up much more
space (4 times more space in a lot of cases) than plain text
equivalents, which means messages take more space to store on servers
and take longer for news readers to download.

The most considerate thing you can do, IMO, is post in plain text.

 

[Jolly Roger]

How do I do remove quoting characters from "Replying"?

You could try clearing the "Include entire message in reply" checkbox,
but then there would be no quoted text at all in the reply message. I'm
not sure it's possible to set Entourage to include quoted text
*without* quoting characters.

One thing you can do: After you've executed the Reply command, select
the quoted text of the message, and choose Edit > Auto Text Cleanup >
Remove Quoting.

 

[Rafael Montserrat]

Thanks Jolly Roger

 

[Mickey Stevens]

You can avoid those using a script; I don't know of any way to directly
control the automatic insertion of such characters built into Entourage.

On your computer, go to /Applications/AppleScript/, and open Script Editor.
Paste the following in:

-- Reply Without Quoting Characters
-- Based on code written by Paul Berkowitz

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
try
if window 1 = main window then
set theMsg to item 1 of (get current messages)

else if class of window 1 = message window then
set theMsg to displayed message of window 1
else
error number -128
end if

if class of theMsg ‚ incoming message then error number -128
on error
beep
display dialog "You must have a received message in the front or
selected in the message pane of the main window for the Reply script to
work." buttons "OK" default button "OK" with icon 0
return
end try

if theMsg's has html then
reply to theMsg
else
reply to theMsg
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Microsoft Entourage"
pick menu item "Remove Quoting" of menu 1 of menu item "Auto
Text Cleanup" of menu "Edit" of menu bar item "Edit" of menu bar 1
keystroke (ASCII character 30)
end tell
end tell
end if
end tell

Then, go File > Save As. Call the script "Reply without Quoting
Characters", and save the script to ~/Documents/Microsoft User
Data/Entourage Script Menu Items/. You can easily set a keyboard shortcut
to the script by adding a code to the end of the filename at this step.
Read here for more on that:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/script/add_shortcuts.html>

Then, in Entourage, when you want to reply to a message, simply select the
message, and select the script from the script menu (to the right of the
"Help" menu), or press the keyboard shortcut. A reply will then be created
with the quoting characters gone and the insertion point on top.

(Note: "~" stands for your home folder, usually located in /Users/<Your
User>/.)

(Note 2: If you run into trouble with this script, open System Preferences,
and then open Universal
Access preferences. Make sure the checkbox to "Enable access for assistive
devices" is checked,
and then quit System Preferences and re-launch Entourage.)