I know many folks who are grieving suffer the same mental "woozies" I did when I first started using forums, and aren't in any frame of mind to, but mentally simply can't, easily follow & focus on the directions provided for each different grief site's help guides for using the different features. Most of us just want to get down to writing about our sorrow, after all!

But since I've seen this one particular confusion arise more often than others, I thought I'd just provide a very quick reference to how to easily use the "REPLY" buttons for posting in various threads, and to minimize the amount of scrolling down required by others when reading through the topics at hand.

Clicking the "Reply" button that sits beside the "+Quote" button at the bottom of someone's post will allow you to view the exact post you'd like to reply to, right in your reply window that next appears. However, if you don't want to "quote" that person's entire previous message outright, you need to highlight then delete (through your keyboard at home) their post (which yet sits above your composed message) before you hit your window's "Add Reply" to enter it onto the thread.

If, however, you don't need to read that person's post within your own reply window (say, because their post is sitting right below your own posting window and you can instead read it by a short scroll downwards as you compose your reply), then you can just use the large, orange "ADD REPLY" button that sits at both the top or bottom of that entire thread - the button that sits right beside the "FAST REPLY" button. Using this button instead eliminates adding another person's post into your own, as you only get your reply window coming up, totally blank inside and ready for you to compose your reply. This way, there is no need to highlight and delete their post afterwards.

I'm not exactly sure what the "+Quote" button does, although I suspect it might serve the same purpose as using the large orange "ADD REPLY" button IF you click it first to make it change to "-Quote", in which case the quoted post that appears in your own reply window does NOT actually get quoted?? (Marc, you might enlighten us all here if you know! )

So I hope this might help any of you who are confused about these features , and I hope even more that my explanations make sense to everyone!

thanks for handling that i've been meaning to discuss this point but the hurricane downtime has me struggling

You're welcome, Marc! I didn't even know you were in one of those areas - hope everyone and everything is all right!

I still don't 'get' what that "+Quote" thingy does, though... (nor have I ever tried the "Fast Reply" button, either)

hmmm, i don't know what the quote button does either, doesn't seem to do anything i can see (this software has become 'bloated' over the years). give the 'fast reply' a try, it takes less time for quickie replies. 'quick edit' is a good timesaver too.

I clicked on the +quote button of Marc's last post above. Then I clicked on the Bottom Orange Add Reply. This is what comes up.

It quotes the post I clicked on the +quote button and puts it in a New Add Reply which I got by clicking the Add Reply.

When I hold the cursor over the +quote button, a balloon comes up and says
"Toggle Multi quote addition". So I don't know if you kept hitting the +quote in different posts...if all of them would appear in a reply like this. Multi quote addition sounds like you can quote more than one post. Don't know if this is any help but I do see this one use for it.

you are correct! i guess if you click one or more of the +quote buttons within a thread, it will quote all of them in one post, or just one if thats what you want. not the greatest feature as it gets redundant after a while to see the same quoted posts (hence, this post's topic thanks for figuring that out.

i'm going to bump this again so people will see it.

for most of your replies, please use the correct reply button when replying to posts. you should use the 'Add Reply' button at the BOTTOM of the entire thread rather than the 'Reply' button found under each individual post. the latter option quotes the previous person's post in its entirety, which impacts bandwidth for our members and puts a heavier load on our server. see below for a visual aid....

Click to view attachment

A couple of other pointers to add:

One, I know I tried that "+QUOTE" on another board once, but it didn't seem to do what it was supposed to, which is, as LoveThem said, to quote multiple posts material. I assume, just like the regular "QUOTE" button in the toolbar above your reply box, you then pick and choose which part(s) of the entire quote(s) you wish to use in your reply. But somehow, I could never get it to work right - musta been doing something wrong.

And two, re: the "edit" options, I use the "Quick Edit" for editing if I don't want to change or add anything that doesn't require the whole range of options from the toolbar. If I need any of those during the editing, I use the "Full Edit" button instead.