THANK YOU! for this tip! I have always been frustrated, and have never been able to figure out how to get rid of those stupid _ _'s and ( )'s around the URL. Marilyn -------------------------original message---------------------- In a message dated 8/16/2006 3:37:26 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, writes: AOLers using AOL 9.0 get their URLs scrambled with a dash ("_") prefix and suffix, and then the URL is repeated with parenthesis around it. There's a way for AOLers (with AOL 9.0) to prevent that from happening: Before you hit the "Send Now" button, right click on the screen and on the popup menu click on "Compose as plain text". ----------------------------------- You can also just right click on the active link (BEFORE you send, of course) and ask to remove the hyperlink.