6 replies to this topic

[mapleleaf]

I have already gone to Tools>Program Options and have checkmarked "Use plain text when pasting to notes."

 

Pasting text from forwarded Gmail messages used to work fine. There were hard returns in the appropriate places. Something changed recently and now pasting doesn't work. 

 

Instead of a nicely pasted email message with hard returns, the To, From, Subject, Date areas and the message itself is bunched up into one mess in RootsMagic when I paste from Gmail. 

 

I've found that by copy/pasting the body of the email into Notes/Research Notes will include hard returns. But then I have to go back to the email, hit Forward, copy the heading info (To, From, Subject, Date), paste into Roots and create hard returns manually. 

 

What changed? Why doesn't pasting work correctly anymore? 

 

-- 

Using RM 7.6.1.0 on Windows 10 Home

Gmail, Chrome Browser (latest version)

[Vyger]

I have already gone to Tools>Program Options and have checkmarked "Use plain text when pasting to notes."

 

Pasting text from forwarded Gmail messages used to work fine. There were hard returns in the appropriate places. Something changed recently and now pasting doesn't work. 

 

Instead of a nicely pasted email message with hard returns, the To, From, Subject, Date areas and the message itself is bunched up into one mess in RootsMagic when I paste from Gmail. 

 

I've found that by copy/pasting the body of the email into Notes/Research Notes will include hard returns. But then I have to go back to the email, hit Forward, copy the heading info (To, From, Subject, Date), paste into Roots and create hard returns manually. 

 

What changed? Why doesn't pasting work correctly anymore? 

 

-- 

Using RM 7.6.1.0 on Windows 10 Home

Gmail, Chrome Browser (latest version)

 

I also do this Debbie into the Notes of a Custom Fact called Email but I do the copy and paste from Outlook which I use for email and I agree it#s important to include the senders details so I normally click reply before copying.

 

It would sound like something has changed at the Gmail end but what about copying to Notepad first and then back to RM? hopefully whatever the problem is will be overcome in the future as copying from web is a common practice.

[mapleleaf]

Thanks for your reply. Copying to Notepad first is what I'll have to do - that works!

 

After copying an email, I also tried clicking "PureText" by Steve Miller (an icon on my taskbar) but that did not help; the text remained jumbled in Roots. Glad to have a work-around with Notepad! 

[Jerry Bryan]

I'm also glad that Notepad worked for you. Copying and pasting from email into RM has been a long term problem for me because I frequently see the exact same problems you describe.

 

I don't like Web browser based user interfaces for email, so I use a Hotmail account and a Gmail account with an IMAP client on my Windows desktop. For me at least, this provides a much better experience than using the same accounts on the Web. My present IMAP client of choice is Mozilla Thunderbird, which is free.

 

Copy and paste from Thunderbird into RM has the same problems you describe. But Thunderbird has a View Source option which I use only when copying and pasting into RM and which provides a "very plain text" view of the email which works without having to use Notepad as an intermediary to clean up the white space. I have to copy and paste twice, once for the headers and once for the body of the email. I do the copy and paste of the headers separately because Thunderbird's View Source option shows all the very voluminous headers - dozens or hundreds of lines of them - when I really only need the basic To:, From:, and Subject: lines.

 

An additional advantage of the Thunderbird approach is that sometimes Web based email doesn't show you email address, just the sender's name. If all you have after a copy and paste is the person's name and not their email address then it might be impossible later to contact the person based on the information you have pasted into RM. But Thunderbird always shows you both the sender's name and their email address.

 

Still another advantage of the Thunderbird approach is that it allows me to store the entire email message including attachments as a file in Windows with an EML extension. I can link the EML file into RM as type "File" and I can open it from within RM. When I open it this way within RM, it opens in Thunderbird and I can see all the original formatting and all the original attachments.

 

Finally, using Thunderbird or other desktop email client means that when I encounter any Web pages with "mailto" tags (email addresses), I can click on the link and it will go straight into Thunderbird to send a message. "mailto" tags don't work when your email is browser based.

 

Jerry

[Vyger]

Still another advantage of the Thunderbird approach is that it allows me to store the entire email message including attachments as a file in Windows with an EML extension. I can link the EML file into RM as type "File" and I can open it from within RM. When I open it this way within RM, it opens in Thunderbird and I can see all the original formatting and all the original attachments.

 

This approach is also quite intuitiive as it's all a matter of keeping related correspondence attached to where it should be and therefore easy to retrieve.

 

One advantage one pasting to Notes is that those Notes fall within the scope of Rootsmagics Find Everywhere routine so if you vaguely remember some mentioning Thunderbird Road it can be easily found within RM. The same would apply to most email client software however it would entail opening and searching within another program rather than within RM.

Sadly it must be stated that the Find Everywhere routine within Rootsmagic does not search and find everywhere so do be careful where you place such information if you want to find it easily.

[mapleleaf]

I did some more experimenting and discovered that if I UN-check "Use plain text when pasting to notes" in Program Options, I can paste emails without losing hard returns. 

[Nettie]

My way of pasting email is to add them to the surname folder  and given name in OneNote.  AS my ON is set up by surnames, then if it fits with RM's database and belongs there I copy the information from ON to RM.  Have not had a problem with mixed up data lines this way.  I made a decision years ago to keep my research that is questionable out of RM until I can prove to my self that it is valid.