Reading email and web pages

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To read web pages, you need to follow a few simple steps.

But first, if you are not comfortable with copying and pasting text in Windows programs, you need to review our basic Windows Clipboard Tutorial first. This tutorial will show you how to copy and paste text.

Let's assume you are using Outlook Express and you want to read an email message.

þ Step by Step

1.

View the email message in Outlook Express

2.

With your mouse, select the text you want to read

3.

From the menu select, Edit | Copy (text now copied to Clipboard)

4.

Launch ReadPlease (or activate ReadPlease if it was running)

5.

Click into the ReadPlease document window (clear document first)

6.

From the menu select, Edit | Paste (text now pasted into ReadPlease)

7.

Press the Play button, and ReadPlease will read the email text

These steps are the same for reading any text from any program. If you can select the text on your screen, ReadPlease can read it to you. There are many hotkeys to make this easier (like [Ctrl]-C for copy, or use the right-click for Clipboard options).

Automatically Play

ReadPlease PLUS has a feature to automatically read whatever you copy to the Windows Clipboard. This is a real time-saving feature. What it means is that it you turn this feature on, ReadPlease will read any text that you copy to Clipboard without having to paste it into ReadPlease. You don't even need to switch to ReadPlease, just copy the text from any program. See Reading Automatically for a complete explanation.

Drag and Drop Feature

ReadPlease supports Windows Drag and Drop feature.

Dragging and dropping is an alternative to using the Windows clipboard (copying and pasting text).

How to use Drag and Drop

1.

Select text with your mouse

2.

Click once on the selected text and hold the mouse in the down position

3.

While holding mouse down, move the cursor to another area of your document, or to another application

4.

Release the mouse and text will be dropped (original text will not be deleted)

It does take some practise, but some users find this easier than copying and pasting.

There is an option you can set to enable ReadPlease to read the text as soon as the text is dropped, see the option Appearance Behavior .

Tip

Try positioning both your browser and ReadPlease as shown below, this will make copying and pasting much easier. ReadPlease 2003 may be resized but only to a maximum of 640x480.