Internet Tips: Free Tool Nabs Web Bugs

More on E-Mailing URLs

After reading the tip on overcoming problems associated with e-mailing long URLs in the June 2001 Internet Tips column, several readers submitted tips of their own.

Eric Connor offers one of the simplest, noting that no matter how long the URL, Netscape Messenger's subject line can handle it. Internet Explorer seems to do just as well, and I'll bet you'd be hard-pressed to find a URL that's too long for your subject line.

The only drawback: Your recipient's e-mail program probably won't display a URL sent in the subject line as a clickable hyperlink the way that it does URLs included in the body of the message. You may have to explain in the accompanying message that the recipient must copy the URL in the subject line and paste it into the browser's Address field.

Ron Sommer suggests sending messages in Quoted Printable format as another way to preserve long URLs. This format inserts carriage returns at the end of paragraphs but not at the end of lines. In my limited testing, the technique worked like a charm.

To send Quoted Printable messages in Outlook Express, choose Tools, Options, click the Send tab, click the Plain Text Settings button in the Mail Sending Format section (see Figure 2), select Quoted Printable from the 'Encode text using' drop-down list, and then click OK twice. In Outlook 2000, choose Tools, Options, click the Mail Format tab, click the Settings button, select Quoted Printable from the 'Encode text using' drop-down list, and finish by clicking OK twice.

Ronald Edwards says his favorite way to send a URL while browsing in Internet Explorer is to choose File, Send, Link by E-mail . This creates a new message in your default e-mail program that contains both the URL text in the message body and a URL attachment that recipients can click to launch the site if the URL in the message ends up broken.

And Dana Hunter notes that when you drag links from IE's Favorites list and drop them into an Outlook message window, you create a clickable link. There's a drawback to URL attachments, though: They work only in Windows. As a result, Internet purists and users of the Macintosh, Linux, and other operating systems may squawk. You just can't win.

Finally, Loretta Harris offers a way to reconnect broken URLs. First, select the entire broken URL and press Ctrl-C to copy it to the Clipboard. Open Microsoft Word (or the text editor of your choice) and paste the broken URL into a document. Search for paragraph breaks, and replace them with spaces.

To do this in Word 2000, choose Edit, Replace, enter ^pin the 'Find what' field, enter Space in the 'Replace with' field, and click Replace until the cursor has made its way through the fractured link. Now simply copy the reunited URL and paste it into your browser's address field.