h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's what happened last time I tried to post a reply that I had laboriously typed:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log

Clearly, simply by my pressing the 'Post' button, I caused a server somewhere to 'blow a gasket'. Upshot was that I gave up, really couldn't be bothered to type the message all over again, only to run the risk of the same thing recurring.

(Thu 7 Aug 13:34)

Hello 237871.

Which board were you trying to use? (not that it matters much - the problems are pretty universal)

I've received similar errors from time to time - one on h2g2 a minute ago surprisingly. It's really irritating when you lose something you have spent ages typing. Sometimes you can hit the Back button and get your message back. Sometimes you can't.

I save my longer messages by drafting them in Windows Notepad before I post them - it's a good habit to get into these days.

If you want to let off some steam, you could try complaining on the Members - Technical Terrors board. The hosts there are more active than elsewhere.

Icy

Icy,

"I save my longer messages by drafting them in Windows Notepad before I post them - it's a good habit to get into these days." Is this relatively simple to do? A few simple instructions to follow?

Computer savvy I am not. Help is always very much appreciated.

Start button, 'programs', 'accessories', 'notepad', write your message, highlight all the text you want by clicking in at the top and either holding down the mouse button and dragging down to the end, or click in to top of text and holding down the shift key click again at the end of the text you want, either will make the bit you want go blue and you can right click on it and 'copy'. Then all you need to do is click into the box for the reply to a message and right click again and 'paste'.

If you have only one reply written in notepad and all of it is your reply you only need to right click and 'select all' to get it all blue, but once you have more than the one message you need to use the first paragraph to select the bit you want.

I am no expert but it works for me!

If you want a spell checker search the web for ieSpell, a free add on to windows explorer. Then you can right click in the reply box and check spelling'.

Ivor Chestikoff, I presume?

Try altering your researcher number to a name.

I hope JSG's answer was understandable. You can of course use any word processor, but I find Notepad the easiest.

The other benefit of using a word-processor as a pre-editor is you can use the editing functions to some effect. If you want to change say a block of text into bold, then you would do Edit - Replace, and change the text [space] into the text *[space]* (You would need to tidy it up a bit at both ends).

Cheers, Icy