I tried using Multi-Quote but failed to figure out how to make it work.
I Googled, “Straight Dope how to use multi-quote” and got this link:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Straight+Dope+how+to+use+multi-quote
But I was unable to make any progress from that thread.
Can anyone please explain how to use Multi-Quote - maybe in just one sentence? Is that possible?
Or … can anyone provide me a link that explains how to use it?
Creating a second post, so we can test multiquote
I clicked Multiquote for your first post. The icon was then highlighted. I then clicked “quote” for my post, and got this reply multiquoting both post 1 and post 2
Bottom right corner of every post are three buttons, in this order left to right: “Quote,” “multi-quote,” and “quick reply to this message.”
Click on the middle one on a post you’d like to quote. The “+” should become a “-” and the button should turn orange (possibly some other color; I’m colorblind so “orange” is my best guess).
Click the same button on any other post you’d like to quote in the same response.
When you get to the last post you want to quote from, click the “Quote” button on that post. This should trigger “reply to thread” open. The reply box should now be pre-populated with the quotes posts you checked the button on.
I have clicked on the multi-quote button on posts #1 and #2 on this thread, and the “quote” button on post #3, yielding:
This is the second post as requested.
Thank you for trying to help me. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me.
I clicked on the middle button of one post and nothing happened. Nothing at all. The “+” did not change to a “-”. The colors did not change.
But your explanation was very good. I must be doing something wrong. Your explanation made perfect sense and I will experiment some more and let you know if I can figure out the problem.
Thanks very much for your help. Much appreciated.
Permit me to mention that the Multi-Quote function can be a bit unreliable. It apparently entails some clever programming on the part of vBulletin, and may be browser-sensitive.
I’ve spent most of my adult life using older versions of various browsers on older machines because I’m too broke and/or cheap-ass to keep up-to-date with the latest technology. (To be sure, I’ll admit that my ass is as cheap as they get.) I’ve found that Multi-Quote works with some browsers and not others. It might just be older browsers that fail. I haven’t tried it with my current browser (a middle-aged version of Safari on a middle-aged Mac laptop).
So if you find that Multi-Quote doesn’t work, that’s my first guess as to the problem. Upgrading your browser (and/or your ass 
) might be the solution.
Okay, I just tried multi-quoting a few of the above posts, using my middle-aged Safari browser on a middle-aged Mac laptop.
It fails, in a different way than Charlie Wayne describes above.
When I click on Multi-Quote, it just immediately opens a Reply box with that one post quoted, just as if I had clicked on “Reply with Quote”.
(Aside: It’s curious that the “Reply with Quote” button appears even when the user is not logged in, while the “Multi-Quote” and “Edit” buttons only appear when the user is logged in.)
It makes sense for “Edit” to only show up when you’re logged in, since most folks aren’t able to edit most posts. But I’m not sure why either quote button would be set up to show when someone’s not logged in.
You have to click – or at least I do – not where the words say “Multi-Quote”, despite the fact that the words light up if you hover over them; but on the little quotation mark box just to the left of the words.
And I need to click in just the right spot, or it doesn’t work. But when it does work, the quote marks visibly change; so I can tell whether I got it right.
ETA: they aren’t quote marks until I click on them; they’re a plus sign. When I click in the right spot they change to quote marks.
:smack:
If the Multi-Quote button is truly not functional for you, I think you can probably manually assemble a Multi-Quote:
open the thread, figure out which posts you want to quote.
Open a text editor (Word, Notepad, whatever)
hit the quote button on the (first) post you want to quote
Cut and paste the text from the reply window that opens into the text editor and add a carriage return (or two)
4a) click on the thread link to exit the reply window and go back to the thread
Repeat 3 and 4 until you have one post left to quote.
Hit the quote button in the last post and paste all the text in your text editor into the reply box above the text that is already there.
The reply box should now be a fair facsimile of what you get from Multi-quote.
It’s kludgy and takes a lot more time, but if the convenient feature ain’t working and you really need to do it- I think this’ll work.
That is exactly what happens for me.
I must admit that I use Windows 7 and an older version of Firefox. It keeps nagging me every day to upgrade and I’m just fed up with all the nags I get from Firefox as well as my anti-spyware utility. I’m having some other problems with this PC and I just don’t want to upgrade anything as long as it works out on the present configuration.
Thank you very much for your help. I have it working now.
Do you happen to use the board’s sultan’s theme? Because there’s one (along with some other) quirk when multiquoting: the text link for “multi quote” doesn’t work, so you must click the icon showing a plus sign, which then changes to an icon with a quote sign. This works for me.
OK. I guess I deserve that. I misread the above post. My mistake.
No. I use the default theme. But thanks for your interest.
Curiouser and curiouser. I don’t ever recall changing the default theme from what it was to anything else, and yet sultan’s theme is what I have.
Who is (or was) sultan? What is his theme? Did Elvis ever cover this theme? Okay, real question: What is it about themes that I should know or care about? Can someone give me a TL;DR about the other theme and why I should try it?
I already tried (or thought I did) what thorny locust suggested, but I’ll try more carefully about clicking exactly on the right pixel in the + sign. Although, note that it has already failed for me in a way different than Charlie Wayne et al have described.
This is entirely true. You can do this.
This is also true. 
The technique can also be used for other similar tasks. F’rinstance:
[ul][li] You can quote a post from one thread into a different thread that way.[/li][li] You can even quote a post from a closed thread (into a different, still open thread of course). Posts in closed threads don’t have a quote button, but you can still fabricate a quote as peccavi describes. In this case, there’s an extra useful step to do: Note that normally-quoted quotes have a link back to the post being quoted. (It’s that little arrow to the right of the “Originally posted by [name]” line in the quote.) You can include that in your fabricated quote too.[/li]
The syntax for a quote is [noparse]
[quote=username;nnnnnnnn]
where the ;nnnnnnnn part is optional. If present, the large 8-digit number is the post number from which the quote came. To discover this, go to the post you are quoting. Hover over the post number at the upper right corner of the post. Note the link to which it points. It may look like:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22074636&postcount=2
Note the number after the p= and copy that into the
[quote]
tag.[/noparse]
[*] You can even quote from a post on a different vBulletin board this way, although you can’t do a link-back to it.[/ul]
I just tried again, carefully as thorny locust suggested. Doesn’t work for me.
Hey, here’s an experiment I would like somebody to try:
[ul][li] Hover your mouse pointer over the “Multi-quote” button (or over the little + sign if that’s what you think you need to do.)[/li][li] Note the link that appears at the bottom of your browser screen.[/li][li] Copy that link to your clip-board, however that’s done on your mochine. (The normal way is to right-click then click on the “Copy link” option, or however the equivalent is done on your laptop computer or mobile device.)[/li][li] Create a new post in this thread, and insert that link into the post for us to see.[/ul][/li]I am noticing that in my case, all three buttons (Reply, Reply with Quote, and Quick Reply) ALL have EXACTLY the same link. They can therefore hardly behave any differently from one another. This makes no sense at all. The Edit button, however, has a different link.
If we know the exact form of the Reply with Quote link, maybe we can fabricate that and do it “by hand”.