How to Quote Text From an Original Email When Replying in Yahoo Mail

This article explains the Yahoo Mail feature that puts quotes around the original email, and how to edit the original email.

Quoting Message Text in Yahoo Mail

When replying to emails in Yahoo Mail, a copy of the original email message will automatically be included in your email, saving you from having to retype or copy-and-paste text from the original message. This is the default behavior for all current versions of Yahoo Mail, and you do not need to change any options for this feature. In fact, there is no setting for disabling quoted text.

When you reply to an email in Yahoo Mail, the original message will be appended at the bottom of your reply. Initially, you won't see the original message text as you compose your response because it is conveniently hidden to cut down on text clutter.

You can reveal the original message text by scrolling down and selecting Show original message at the bottom of your email message.

Quoting Only Portions of Original Messages

You don't have to include the full quoted text from the original message in your response—or any of the quoted text for that matter. When replying to an email, you can edit the quoted message text and cut it down to just portions you want to be quoted in your response, or delete it entirely. To do this, see the steps below:

1. Open an email that you are replying to and select Reply\Reply all.

2. Unhide the quoted text by scrolling down to the bottom of your response and selecting Show original message.

3. Now select or highlight the text you wish to delete from the original message and press Delete.

How Quoted Text Appears in Emails

Quoted text from original messages will be indented slightly from the left margin and set off with a vertical line to make it clear that the text is from the original message.

Further replies in the same email conversation will continue to include quoted text from the prior messages. Each of these will be further indented and set off by vertical lines, creating a "nested" look for those messages so they can be placed in context to one another.