47. Using an E-mail Clipboard

Have you ever been writing a long email and then decided to leave the Write screen so you could go get a link that you want to include in the email? Or perhaps you want to refer to a previous email and want to leave for a moment to go copy some of it's text. If you have ever done this and then returned to your email Write screen, only to find that all the stuff you have written is gone, you might want to use the WebTV "clipboard" feature. The clipboard is a special email "Write" screen onto which you can paste text, such as a URL, and then leave the screen to go get another URL. And you can leave the screen with complete confidence, knowing that whatever you have written will still be there when you come back!

To use the clipboard, press the Go To key. Then, using your Delete key, erase the http:// which is already in the box.

Next, type this ....

mailto:1

That's the words mail and to followed by a colon and the number 1. The number 1 has no real significance. You could just as easily use the number 2, or the word "me" after the colon, as in...

mailto:me

You will be taken to an email "Write" screen, where you can paste your first URL. Once that's done, you can then leave that email screen with the confidence that you will not "lose" what you have pasted. It will be there when you return. The only exception is this: You cannot "power off" your unit while viewing this clipboard screen, or it will be lost.

And this clipboard will remain intact for several days! You can power off the unit and the clipboard will still retain what you have typed, as long as you don't power off while the clipboard is on-screen!

You can leave that screen and go "get" another URL and copy it. As soon as you've done that, press Go To, erase the http:// and then type mailto:1 in the blank box. You will return to the email "Write" screen where you pasted the first URL, and you can now paste another one.

You can leave and return to this "clipboard" as often as you like.

Once you have pasted all the URLs or text you wish to save, then just go back up to the "To:" field of the email, erase the number 1, and address the email to either yourself or the appropriate recipient. Type in a Subject line and send it.

If you sent it to yourself as a way to store URLs, the email you receive will contain all those links you want to save, and you can keep that email in your Saved email folder for future reference!

Keep a clipboard Indefinitely!

To "hold" an unfinished email indefinitely, (for more than the usual four day allowance), address it to:
me@webt.net and press Send.

Note that you MUST leave out the final 'V" in "webtv"!

The email will be returned to you as undeliverable because you typed a non-existent domain name (webt.net).

When you are ready to further edit this email, open it and click on Edit message. You can continue writing more text, or even edit the To: field and then send it.

If you want to edit it again later, just send it again (with the "incorrect domain") and keep the latest "undeliverable" version in your inbox for further editing.

To finish and finally send, correct the address to a real email address and click on Send.