Clipping is how you save :) It puts it into your little personal file cabinet on GW. Then to access, just click on your name and look at "my clippings".

I don't know how to retrieve threads that I've posted on, so I'll just do a search for my user name and check in on the threads I'm interested in.

The clippings function is linked to your account -- you can clip a posting within a thread -- look to the far right of a given posting within a thread - there's highlighted text that reads "clip this post". Click on that, and it should take you to your clippings page, and you just need to save the clipped post to your account. You can make your clippings public or private, so if you want to clip a post that has pics in it, and you mark the post as having pictures of ugly pendants, you might want to mark your clippings as private. Others can see your clippings by clicking on your username and going to your account info. There's probably more to it than that, but that's what I've learned since I started.

OK, I just figured out two more things:

1) if you save a clipped post, and click on the thread title in that post, it'll take you back to that thread, so contrary to my prior email you can use clippings to save posts AND threads.

2) there's a "see most clipped" function right under "clip this post"-- it's kindof neat, to see what the popular posts are, except they seem to be more garden-y than kitchen-y.

Good luck!

Great information! Now I don't have to keep scrolling through posts trying to remember which one I was looking for!
Thanks a bunch!

Caution about clippings:

1. You can save a maximum of 50 clippings. Once you reach the max, you may no longer clip or email a post.

If there are pictures in a post and the poster removes them from his/her photo account, you will also lose the pictures.
If the thread "goes missing" (as used to happen as soon as it dropped off page 67 pre-2008), you will not be able to retrieve the entire thread. If you attempt to retrieve the thread, you will get a "Missing File" message. Note that your clipped post will remain, you just can no longer access the entire thread.

Note that if you bookmark a thread and one of the posters on that thread removes their pictures you will lose them this way as well.

The only way to guarantee permanently saving a post + pictures is to actually save the post to your local machine. There are two ways & both are easy to do:

• Save the thread as an html file(s) to your local machine

  • Firefox:

    1. File --> Save Page As...
    2. You will be prompted to save the file

Internet Explorer:

1. File --> Save As...
2. You will be prompted to save the file

Save the thread to an MS Word or other type file to your local machine

1. Copy the thread in its entirety

• Select all: Ctrl-A (or Edit --> Select All)
• Copy: Ctrl-C (or Edit --> Copy)

2. Open an MS Word or other document & Paste what you just copied into the document: Ctrl-V

3. Save the file (usually: File --> Save As...)

HTH!

Gr82bgrammy ~ I have been saving posts for months and have been doing it as Buehl suggests above as a WORD document. I didn't know about the "Clippings." Saved as a WORD document, you won't have to worry about losing it including any images you copy--and I've copied plenty.

If you do a Google search on a topic, sometimes you get hits on posts that other GWers have clipped--even if the thread itself is not found in the search.

There have been a few times when I was looking for a thread that had dropped off page 67 (so wasn't found doing a search on the Forum) but was able to get it by doing a Google search, clicking on the "clipping" that was found, and then clicking on the thread subject...

It's a round-a-bout way of finding threads that have fallen off...but whatever works!

FYI for the more technically inclined - Firefox has an add-on called Zotero which can create libraries of online pages. Once you get it up and running, a single mouse-click will save an entire thread to your computer.

Here is a link that might be useful: Zotero info

Thanks again, for all the great info. I have begun clipping some posts, but liked the idea of saving important ones on my HD to be sure not to loose them.

Chefkev, I also downloaded Zotero because I thought it looked like a great program. However, I'm somewhat computer challenged and am not sure what I would ever use all those steps for.
Take care,
Terry