In some of the emails I receive is the symbol >
at the start of each line, any amount from 2 up to 8,
what are these, and why do they appear in received mail when they are obviously not typed in.

It's a pain having to delete the > after copying emails I wish to save to a word file.

Bob, January 2011

That symbol is automaticaly inserted at the beggining of lines when you reply to a message while quoting the original message.

One more is added every times the message is re-repplyed. So, the eight's reply will have >>>>>>>> at the beggining ot the lines from the first message.

You can copy the whole message into your word processor and do a Search and replace of ">" to "" or empty text.
It will automaticaly remove ALL ">" from the text.

Electro, April 2011