A whole website of my favorite fandom was just taken down, off the internet. It made me realize that I couldn't depend on being able to re-read my favorite stories, unless I saved them in some form for my personal use. I see my computer offers me four formats for saving stories:

webpage complete; web archive, single file; web page html only; and text file

Several years ago, I saved my favorite stories to cd. I can't remember which of the above I used, but I found that, rather than just bringing up the file from the cd, the computer would keep attempting to hook up to the internet and find the website I had downloaded the story from. Can you guys give me some advice as to the best way to go about saving stories from the internet?

Downloading them to a reader might work, but... I'm not sure how permanent that is, or if it works off of the internet...
If all else fails, Copy and paste?

I save the web page and then copy paste it into a word doc. This works for sites like FF.net where you cant copy.

You can just turn off the CSS style sheet in your browser when you're using FFNet as the 'No Copy/Paste' feature is actually embedded into their CSS, it's not part of the page's normal html coding. After that Copy/Paste works, unfortunately you're left with a text blob without the CSS styling to make it prettier.

Alternatively you can always check if the author is on AO3, where you can download the entire work in various formats, as this is part of their website. It's not something ironically that the author can opt out of unfortunately.

~ Pyre

P.S: To disable the style sheet in Firefox you go to the View menu and go down to Page Style, open the drop-down menu, and select 'No Style'. This will remove all of the visual aesthetics in the webpage. So yah text blobs. Beware.

You can do the same thing in Explorer by opening the command menu selecting Page and scrolling down to Style, and selecting No Style. Again you'll turn off the CSS page styling. So another text blob. I only use this for FFNet nowhere else.

To turn the CSS styling back on in both just do the same thing and select 'Basic Page Style' in Firefox, and 'Default Style' in Explorer.

This will restore the visual aesthetics, make your page pretty again, and put back all of the CSS stylings.

There are a few browser apps that can assist with the copying of website text or copying the entire page as a PDF. Although, as many are made by 3rd parties, viruses can be an issue. So take caution. For this reason, I choose to do without. The benefit to these apps, however, is that you can copy off sites that would otherwise prevent you from doing so.

However, the age old method of highlight, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V into Word hasn't given me a problem when I'm too lazy to try fancier methods. I admit, though, I'm dual screened, which makes it easier to visualize without having to fiddle between 2 windowed programs. I just keep a window open of each per monitor and blast away.

If you choose this method, here are some helpful tips for those who aren't familiar with these commands:

To highlight a selection faster: Place cursor at beginning of selection, hold left mouse button down and scroll through selection with down arrow button. It will more quickly highlight intended text than trying to use mouse. Just make sure to pay attention to your stopping point.

Alt+ Tab: Switches between open program screens, such as from browser to Word. Just hold down Alt and press Tab until you reach the program window you want. I'll admit, just selecting from the task bar below may be faster, but in case you want another option.

Ctrl + A: Will select all text on screen, which may be less time consuming, but you will get all the miscellaneous text on the screen as well, such as link text on the top and bottom.

Ctrl + C : Copy

Ctrl + V : Paste


For the most part, since Dokuga uses common type font and format, Word easily recognizes and holds the formatting during pasting. This includes italics, bolding, paragraph breaks, etc. Exceptions for this method would be unrecognizable characters, not commonly used in everyday text, such as: ë ñ or others.


*Important Notes: As someone has mentioned before, fanfiction.net does not allow you to copy, so the above method will not work.

Another easy, yet less efficient method would be to print (using browser print option) into XPS and then copying and pasting from there. Although, this can get frustrating when making text selections to copy.

If you have Microsoft Note, you could also print to Note. The downside to this, though, it will be transferred as an image, so you are unable to reformat how it looks; it copies the page exactly as you see it on screen. Although, if aesthetics are not a concern, this is very easy to do. Plus side of Note, you can add chapters into one continuous page or keep them as chapters and easily save into PDF.

I hope this helps and was not to confusing!

Wow, everyone. Thanks for all the great tips. Strangely, it never even occurred to me to just cut and paste! How elegantly simple! And thanks, Emiko. You give such good, detailed instruction. I feel like I can roll up my sleeves and take on my computer, after reading the advice you give. It took a little time, but I think I've added to all your karma points, so that you would know how much I appreciate the useful advice...