In case anyone is interested & can make sense of it, here is the 'dequote selection' script from emailer on the odd chance it can be modified.....
thanks!-- De-Quoter v1.0 -- January 10, 1998 -- strip out ">" quote marks from the selection of a message -- by Eric Scheid, Ironclad Internet, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- CAUTION: if the text content of the selection appears in -- exactly the same form in front of the actual selection, -- then that earlier occurance will be replaced, not the selection. -- example: in a message that looks like: -- some text -- >blather-blah -- >more quoted text -- >blather-blah -- and you select the second line of ">quoted text", -- then the first line of ">quoted text" will be stripped, -- not the second occurance -- -- Sorry, nothing can be done about that :-( -- -- but then, how likely is that situation to occur ;-) property prefixes_to_strip : {" > ", "> ", " >", ">"} -- note: prefixes are checked in sequence, -- so it's important to put substrings last -- otherwise ">" will get stripped out before "> ", -- which would leave all lines prefixed with " " on run tell application "Emailer 2.0v3" activate set windowClass to the class of the front window if windowClass is not in {incoming message window, outgoing message window} then display dialog ¬ "This script only works on a selection in a displayed message" buttons {"OK"} ¬ default button {"OK"} return false end if set selected_content to the selection if selected_content is "" then display dialog ¬ "This script only works on a selection in a displayed message" buttons {"OK"} ¬ default button {"OK"} return false end if set selectedContent to the selection set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to return set theLines to the text items of selectedContent set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims set newLines to {} repeat with theLine in theLines set theNewLine to theLine repeat with thePrefix in prefixes_to_strip if theLine starts with thePrefix then set theNewLine to my stripPrefix(theLine, thePrefix) exit repeat -- thus "> > blah" won't get stripped to " blah" end if end repeat set newLines to newLines & theNewLine end repeat set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to return set newLines to the newLines as text set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims if windowClass is incoming message window then set theWindow to front window set theMsg to displayed message of theWindow set theContent to the content of theMsg set theOffset to the offset of selectedContent in theContent -- v1.0.1 bug fix : offset of "x" in "xyz" is 1, not zero if theOffset = 1 then -- there is no text in front of the selection set thePreamble to "" else -- there is text in front of the selection set thePreamble to characters 1 thru (theOffset - 1) of theContent as text end if if (theOffset + the (length of selectedContent)) < the length of theContent then -- there is text after the selection set thePostamble to characters (theOffset + the (length of selectedContent)) thru -1 of theContent as text else -- there is no text following the selection set thePostamble to "" end if set newContent to thePreamble & newLines & thePostamble set the content of theMsg to newContent else set the selection to newLines end if end tell end run on stripPrefix(theLine, thePrefix) if length of theLine > length of thePrefix then return characters (1 + (length of thePrefix)) thru -1 of theLine as text else return "" end if end stripPrefix