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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
March 22, 2009
Q.
I have created a large group in my email
that I use to send a monthly newsletter. My
home office now wants a list of these
people. Is there a way I can copy this list
without having to type them?
A.
This request is not as rare as one might
first believe. I have been asked this or
something very similar many times. It seems
that few people actually know the real power
behind the copy and paste features or the
find and replace features in most
applications.
In most
cases, if text or graphics can be
highlighted, they can be copied and pasted
elsewhere. Not all programs will accept all
pasted items, but most can be pasted in
another program. If there is no specific
choice given to copy or paste, pressing the
CTRL+C keypress is pretty universal for
copy, and CTRL+V for paste.
In fact,
if you look closely at most keyboards, the C
key is marked with *Copy, and the V key with
*Paste where the * indicates pressing the
CTRL key. Note too, that there are keys that
are labeled *All, *Save, *Undo, *Cut, *Bold,
*New, *Redo, *Underline, *Italics, *Open and
other CTRL+ key combinations. Most of these
will work in most applications.
Generally
speaking, applications that allow
manipulating text or graphics also include
the "Paste Special" feature that allows
converting the text to be pasted in
different ways.
Assuming
that you use Outlook Express or Windows
mail, there is no direct way that you can do
this copy and paste the addresses in an
email group. You could export your entire
contacts list, but that would hardly be what
you want to do. However, with a little
finagling, there is a way this can be done
without re-typing the entire list. Here is
one way that it can be done.
1. Open
MS Word or some other word processor and
then minimize it.. I'll be using Word 2003
and Outlook Express in this example but the
process should be doable in any word
processor or email program.
2. Now
open your email program and set up to create
a new message. In the "To" box, enter the
group name. Without doing anything else,
click File, then Save. Close the new message
you just created. If you receive a message
about it being saved in the Draft folder,
click OK.
3. Locate
the "Draft" folder, and double click it to
open it. In it will be the email that you
just saved.
4. Double
click on it and it will open. In the "To"
space will be the names and emails of all in
your email group.
5. Press
CTRL + A to highlight all of them.
6. Right
click on any one of them and choose Copy.
Close the message.
7.
Restore Word from the tray, and click Edit,
then Paste. This will put all the names and
email addresses in the document, but
probably not in a form that you can readily
use.
8. Click
Edit and then Replace.
9. In the
"Find what" space, enter a semi-colon (;).
10. Click
the little down arrow next to "More"
11. Place
the cursor in the "Replace with" space and
click it so the vertical cursor appears.
12. Click
the little down arrow in the "Special"
button.
13. From
the list, select "Paragraph Mark" (Not
Paragraph Character).
14. This
should place a carrot and lower case (p) in
the Replace space that looks like this.
(^p). If not, repeat the above process until
there is a semi-colon (;) in the "Find what"
space and the symbols (^p) in the "Replace
with" space.
15. Click
the "Replace all" button, and when the
process completes, click OK.
16. Close
the "Find and Replace" dialog box.
Now you
will have a list consisting of the name and
email address of all those in your E-mail
group that can be saved and sent to your
home office. If you would like to further
modify it by removing the < and > before and
after the addresses, you can use the Replace
option for this.
In the
"Find what" space enter > and leave the
"Replace with" space empty. This will remove
the > symbol. Repeat using the < to remove
it. |
