"How do you print out yahoo discussion threads?" Topic

There are some yahoo group discussion threads I would like to print out and study closer.

However, a typical thread of 29 messages might well take over 200 pages, if sent straight to the printer.

I've tried copying text, and dumping into a word processor for editing and reduction -- but the copied text comes with strange table formatting.

Is there an easy way to grab text?

Help appreciated, cotedelachevre

post it into notepad, it does not format like word does.

Select and past to the add comment box on the thread in TMP. Then slect again from that box and copy then go to word. I am sure there is an easier way but I have not found it.
VR
James Mattes

Option 1.

Select the text. Copy it.

Paste it into Word, using the Paste Special function, as "unformatted text". That strips out the html formatting, but you also lose any bolds, italics, quotes etc.

Option 2.

Save the file as .html from your browser to your hard drive. It will open in your default browser and you can read it as normal. This keeps all the formatting.

It usually also keeps external hyperlinks, which can be very useful.

You can still select text from this and save to Word if you want.

Option 3.

Get Acrobat and "Print as pdf" from your open web page. This will give a file with formatting, but sometimes it won't work very well.

Thank you, everybody. Yes, the trick is to strip the formatting and save as text. From there, you can delete out the superfluous, and save as a new file. I was able to reduce 200+ pages to 16 pages for one thread.

If I could change yahoo groups, I would make it harder, if not impossible, to copy previously posted material into your new comment. Too many posts are a single meaningful sentence -- followed by pages and pages of blind-copied earlier text.

Thanks again, cotedelachevre