Mozilla Monitor website will be down for 2 hours starting 5/20/2025 at 6 AM PT. Visit our status site for updates.

Avatar for Username

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

What does the small black anchor on yellow background symbol mid-text indicate?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 205 views
  • Last reply by Onno Ekker

ewolb
ewolb

It may have arisen as part of pasted text from a Word doc.

It may have arisen as part of pasted text from a Word doc.

Chosen solution

This indicates a place that you can link to. You can use this for example to create an index at the start of the mail. When you select the text around it and go to menu Insert > HTML, you can see the HTML code generated for the anchor. It should be something like <a name="test">test</a>.

You can insert anchors yourself with menu Insert > Named Anchor and you can link to it by adding a link with Insert > Link and refer to the name "#test" for the example above.

In the generated message there will be a link and if the recipient clicks the link, focus will move to the place where the anchor is.

This only works for HTML messages and it works very much the same as links on a HTML-page.

If you don't "point" to the anchor, nothing bad happens. The recipient doesn't see it, it just makes your message a bit bigger, which happens anyway when you copy text from Word. The only way to prevent that is to paste without formatting, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Shift+V.

Read this answer in context 👍 3

All Replies (1)

Onno Ekker
Onno Ekker

Chosen Solution

This indicates a place that you can link to. You can use this for example to create an index at the start of the mail. When you select the text around it and go to menu Insert > HTML, you can see the HTML code generated for the anchor. It should be something like <a name="test">test</a>.

You can insert anchors yourself with menu Insert > Named Anchor and you can link to it by adding a link with Insert > Link and refer to the name "#test" for the example above.

In the generated message there will be a link and if the recipient clicks the link, focus will move to the place where the anchor is.

This only works for HTML messages and it works very much the same as links on a HTML-page.

If you don't "point" to the anchor, nothing bad happens. The recipient doesn't see it, it just makes your message a bit bigger, which happens anyway when you copy text from Word. The only way to prevent that is to paste without formatting, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Shift+V.