How to save a metafilter answer?

May 21, 2010 4:55 PM

I want to save or print out the answers that were given to a Metafilter question that was asked yesterday. I tried highlighting and copying to word but nothing showed up except the poster's names. What do I need to do to be able to save this information for the future?
posted by Flacka to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

When you finish pasting, select all, and change the text colour to black. If you're viewing the default page, remember that you are copying white text.
posted by Sallyfur at 4:56 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing that the white font stayed white, and blended into the background. You should have an option to paste as plain text, or you could use a program like Notepad that won't use the color formatting.
posted by niles at 4:57 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

That might be because it's preserving the font formatting and making all the text white (on a white background). After you have pasted everything into Word, try selecting it all again and changing the font colour.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:57 PM on May 21, 2010

Another option, to create an electronic copy, is to right-click anywhere in the page and 'Save Page As'.
posted by Lebannen at 4:58 PM on May 21, 2010

You may be interested in the Scrapbook extension if you are using Firefox. I use it all the time to save pages right in the browser.
posted by ropeladder at 5:06 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Paste it into a plain text editor: Notepad, etc. Then, having pasted it there, copy and paste a second time into Word.

[The preserve-formatting copy is just about my least favorite misfeature ever.]
posted by Netzapper at 5:10 PM on May 21, 2010

MetaFilter has a pretty nice print stylesheet, so if you just do the old File, Print from your browser you should get a nifty looking hard copy, if that's what you want.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:23 PM on May 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

you can also "save as .mht" - this feature is built into IE. it'll save the entire page as a single document.
posted by nadawi at 5:25 PM on May 21, 2010

Wow, this valuable info, albeit a bit late. That ADHD thread? It was 38 pages long. I literally cut and scotchtaped the comments I wanted, then photocopied it. White on white, eh? Huh! That never would have occurred to me.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:55 PM on May 21, 2010

Surfulator is my grab-the-metafilter-article-and-save-to-searchable-database software of choice. Scrapbook is ok, but I wanted something that also worked with IE.
posted by flutable at 6:41 PM on May 21, 2010

In your Metafilter preferences, discover the joy that is the Plain Theme.
posted by sageleaf at 7:12 PM on May 21, 2010

Personally, I'm a big fan of evernote for this sort of thing, as it ties together my phone and personal computers with a nice app, with access from any browser too.
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:56 AM on May 22, 2010

Evernote has the same problem, though, because it defaults to white text on a white background. I love it too, but it requires some more work to make it readable.
posted by AngerBoy at 8:53 PM on May 22, 2010