Just like you cut-and-paste (perhaps copy-and-paste) from anywhere else. You select and mark the text, you copy it to the system clipboard, you paste it into its new home. I don't understand why the original text being in an email message makes any difference to the process. Here's a snippet from a randomly selected email in my mozilla folder in Thunderbird: "ap mail accounts get remote access to any folder on the server. You subscribe to see folders. Headers are downloaded" Just to show that there is no special trick when Thunderbird is being used. Perhaps your question is really "how do I copy and paste text"? In which case, get a knowledgeable friend to walk you through it, or sign up for some computer classes at evening school. Here's what I would try to show you… The first thing is to select the text you want to copy. Most people will reach for the mouse, drag over the text with the left button held down. The text you drag over changes colour and is "selected". You can also select by moving the cursor through the text using the keyboard whilst holding down ''shift''. The arrow keys, home, end, page up and page down keys allow you to navigate rapidly and efficiently through the text. So ctrl+shift+end will generally select from where you are down to the end of the document. Much faster than walking all the way there with the mouse. ;-) You then copy this selected text. A right-click will deliver a pop-up menu which includes "copy". Many if not most programs have an "Edit" on the menu which offers the same. Old people like me who have been using computers for years know standard keystrokes. So ctrl+c (hold down ''control'', tap ''c'', release ''control'') will will copy the selected text to the clipboard. Alternatively, ctrl+x will CUT the text - but did you really want to remove it from the original? Now you move to where you want to paste. You'll probably have to click on it to wake it up and make it the active program. Again you can right-click, use the menu, or use ctrl+v to paste. And there's more. If you can see both the original text and the new place you want to put it, then once you have selected it, you may be able to drag it with the mouse from one place to the other. Not all programs permit this, and in some case, you'd ''move'', not ''copy'', the selected text. Holding down control (or sometimes shift) while dragging will change it to a copy operation. At present, Thunderbird has a slightly uneasy relationship with the clipboard. Sometimes it won't accept copied text from the clipboard. My workaround is to paste to a different program (I use Notepad++), then copy and paste from there into Thunderbird.