For those of you who send emails as text messages to cell phones, you’re well aware that you have to a) send in plain text only and b) count your characters to make sure you don’t trip the 140-character limit.
Setting email to send in plain text in easy. In popular email providers such as Yahoo! Mail there is an option right at the top to change from Rich Text to Plain Text. In Windows Live Mail, when composing a new email you can tap your ALT key, then click Format then Plain text, like this:
When it comes to counting characters it must be done manually. This is a pain in the neck to do. However there are two utilities you can use to somewhat automate this process.
Word Count Plus for Firefox
Site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4718
This particularly works best if using web-based mail. Type your message. Highlight the entire message using CTRL+A (select all). Then click the Word Count Plus icon. It counts the words. Then hover to see how many characters were used, like this:
This is quick, effective and it works. You see exactly how many characters are used so you don’t go over the 140-character limit when sending an email as a text message to a cell phone.
Important note: This obviously does not take into consideration email that adds in text advertisements to the tail of messages you send out. Gmail does not tag outgoing mails with ads nor does Yahoo – but Hotmail does when using in the browser (but not with Windows Live Mail client).
Notepad++
Site: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
This is for those who don’t use Firefox but still want an easy way to count characters. Notepad++ is a text editor but it counts characters easily.
Open Notepad++. Type what you intend to send as an email in it. Press CTRL+A to select all.
Click TextFX, TextFX Tools, Word Count, like this:
A window will pop up after that:
What to pay attention to is the third line, Characters. That will tell you how many are in use. In this instance, I’m still okay because I’m at 137 which is just under 140.
Copy and paste your message from Notepad++ into your email and send.
Word Count Plus is obviously the easier of the two because it’s right in the browser and stays out of the way neatly when not using it. But for those using email programs, Notepad++ is just a quick hop to a text editor that counts characters quickly which for most people is faster than counting yourself.
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