Absolutely Inbox

Greater than nothing.

Suppose you get a forwarded email that looks like the following, and further suppose that you want to follow its instructions and pass it on to everyone you know:

>>>>
>>>>This is
>>>amazing!!!!!!
>>>>>>Look up your first name in this
>>>>>list and add
>>>>>>one to the numbor after the
>>>>>name
>>>>>>or add your name followed by
>>>>>a 1
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Andy 4
>>>>>>>Bobby 2
>>>>>>>Cindy 2
…and so on…
>
>

Stop! Do not forward it until you clean it up. That means removing all those “>” characters beginning each line, then taking out the extra line breaks.

So let’s pretend you got the email in the example above. What do you do? Do you hit “Forward” as fast as you can, update the number by your name, then dump your contact list in the To: line and hit “Send?” Nope. Don’t do it.

Resist the urge.

Get rid of the “>” symbols. If your email program will let you, search-and-replace all the “>” with “” (nothing). If you can’t do that from within your email program, you can copy the text of the email to a text editor and search-replace there. (Select all the text in your email, use Edit/Copy or hit Control-C to copy the text to the clipboard, then in the text editor use Edit/Paste or Control-V to paste the text.) For example, most Windows programs will search and replace text if you hit Control-H. A little dialog will open with “Find what:” and “Replace with:” fields. Put “>” in the first field and nothing in the second field, then hit replace-all (or replace them one at a time if the email contains >’s that you don’t wish to replace). Now your text looks like this:

This is
amazing!!!!!!
Look up your first name in this
list and add
one to the numbor after the
name
or add your name followed by
a 1

Andy 4
Bobby 2
Cindy 2
…and so on…

Looking better, huh? You’re not done yet. Now you want to fix up those lines at the beginning. Put them back together, using your best judgement, and increment the number by your name (or, since “Cedric” isn’t in the list, add it). You might even fix that spelling error, changing “numbor” to “number.” Now you’ve got:

This is amazing!!!!!!

Look up your first name in this list and add one to the numbor after the name or add your name followed by a 1:

Andy 4
Bobby 2
Cedric 1
Cindy 2
…and so on…

You’re ready to copy the text back to your email program, add your recipients, and hit Send.