I suggested that Frank can remove the forwarding brackets by setting a few options in Outlook Express.  Unfortunately, this does not remove the existing brackets already present in the email.

Of course, Gazette readers were on their toes and sent in some really great suggestions:

(Popular pick): J.C. Tremblay suggested a freeware utility called StripMail, which:

• Strips the characters ">" and "|" from forwarded e-mails.
• Formats the text into paragraphs, making it easier to read.
• Changes the text's right margin, by indenting.
• Can be used with any e-mail client.

http://www.dsoft.com.tr/stripmail

(Popular Pick): Michael M. recommended Email Stripper by papercut.biz:

" I think I have found a great program for cleaning e-mails, so you can forward it all nice and clean, have a peek.

http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm "

(Popular Pick): Ronald G. suggested eCleaner from Tripod:

" There's a nice freeware solution I've used to deal with this issue:

http://ecleaner.tripod.com/clean202.zip "

John H. suggested eCleaner (free):

http://lubbockinfo.com/cleaner

David B. says Mr. Ed's site strips brackets and other stuff online:

" There is an online site that will strip brackets from messages for you. Often the brackets cannot be avoided because they are on messages which have been forwarded multiple times. This site does a nice job of stripped out brackets (whether caused by your own options or others).

http://www.geocities.com/cj1alt/stripper.html "

David E. suggested eClean 2000:

" There is a neat little shareware/freeware program called eClean that makes this a snap. One click and the >> hashes >> are gone. It also allows for wrapping sentences, paragraphs, and all manner of clutter cleanup.

http://www.jd-software.com/eClean2000 "

R. Scott says:

" MailCleaner is free and will remove existing brackets from emails, but only works for IncrediMail (not Outlook Express):

http://www.mailcleaner.com "