How to delete finished post instead of sending/replying

[GDahl]

Alan or Glenn, help!!

Not being very media savvy, I need to learn how to delete a post rather than send it. Case in point: I typed a reply to the "Wisconsin River" thread, but it was blocked due to the post "containing over 15 000 words" (or characters)? in my reply. When I reviewed my post, I found that the original post's lengthy copy/attachment of a message from another website was now attached to my reply.

Also, the system had repeated the original post a couple of times. It took about 5 minutes to delete the copied attachment (from Darren) and duplicates, but it left copies of "Erica said" as part of my reply. Finally, I was able to send my reply.

This is the first time I've had this happen. If my message is blocked again, is there a way to erase my post and "back" out of the message box? Thanks! I appreciate any instructions you can provide.

 

[billconner]

Delete it all and go to another post And then back out. I think.

 

[Alan Gage]

When I reviewed my post, I found that the original post's lengthy copy/attachment of a message from another website was now attached to my reply.

Before you enter anything in the reply box you can highlight the text you want to quote, as I did above, and a popup will appear that says "+quote" or "reply"

If you hit "reply" then only the text you highlighted will be quoted to save this problem in the future. The quote will be automatically added to the reply box. Additionally, you can add more quotes to the same reply at any time by doing the same thing (highlighting the text and clicking the 'reply' popup.

When you quote someone else's text you need to be sure you don't type your own response in the quote box or, as happened with your reply, it will be inside a box that states, "so and so said..."

As for what to do when you want to delete a reply rather than finishing it: the easiest thing to do is click the floppy disk icon at the top right of the reply box and click 'delete draft'. Alternately you could just manually select all the text (ctrl+A) and then delete it.

I think I fixed your reply in the Wisconsin River thread. Please check and make sure that's how you meant it to be.

Alan

 

[recped]

Just select the text you want to delete and then delete.

When you want to reply to a specific post you can hit the "reply" button, this will place the complete post in your reply. If you just want a small portion of the post to be included then select that "quote" then in your post you can "insert quote".

The really nice feature of Quote is that you can quote from multiple posts and use the Insert Quote function to add the ones you want into your reply.

Another nice feature is that when you start a reply but you don't finish it and then wander off to other threads when you come back what you had written in the reply box will still be there.

You can also reply without quoting anything, if the reply is directed to a specific user you can simply type @username instead. This is good for very active threads where there might be multiple posts from other users so other may not know which specific post you are replying to.


Some of this post is redundant because @Alan Gage is too fast! His post showed up while I was fixing my bad spelling and poor grammar!


This actually highlights another great feature of the board format, it's lets you know that other posts have been made while you are writing yours. You can view then newer posts without losing anything from your half finished reply.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Gail, if I understand you, here are a few tips:

- If you don't want to post a message you have typed in the reply message box, just delete everything in the box so it's empty.

- You don't need to hit the "Reply" link in another person's post to reply to it. That will insert the other person's entire post as a quote into your reply. You only do that when you want that to happen, for example when the post you are replying to is short.

- Often, all you want to do when replying to another person's post is just to quote a sentence or two from theirs. To do that, you use the select quote/multi-quote function, which is explained in THIS thread. You can use multi-quote to insert multiple quotes from one person or from different persons into your message.

- You have 48 hours in which to edit any post you make. After that, the edit button disappears. So, you have plenty of time to delete all the words in your current reply to Erica in the "Wisconsin River" thread and replace them with any other quotes or words or pictures you want.

- However, you can't actually delete your own post and make it go away, but you could just replace everything with a period if you want to abandon it. Or, just change your message to something like "Please delete", and then Alan or I will do so when we see it. Or, DM both of us asking for a deletion of your post.

 

[Gamma1214]

It looks like they've got your pretty well covered but another helpful feature is the "Preview" button in the upper right of your reply box.

Getting in the habit of clicking it before posting will let you know what your post will actually look like so you can catch issues (like unwanted text) and/or proofread before actually sending it live on the interweb.

 

[GDahl]

Thanks Bill, Alan, Glenn, recped, and Gamma for your very detailed and helpful instructions. I may need to reread before trying out since I'm such an online forum newbie! Fwiw, I use my iPhone to access the web.