ARCHIVED: How do I cancel a Usenet news article that I posted?

The instructions below tell you how to cancel a Usenet news article that you posted, depending on your newsreader. Some newsreaders cannot cancel articles, while others did not have this capability in early versions (e.g., NewsWatcher and Netscape Navigator prior to their 2.0 releases).

Note: Even if you cancel a message, this does not ensure that no one will read your cancelled posting. Not all sites respect cancellation messages, and there are propagation delays before your cancel notice reaches all sites on the network. If you posted the message to multiple newsgroups, you must cancel the message in each one. Also be aware that you can cancel only your own postings, not those of others.

• Netscape, Mozilla, or Thunderbird: With the article that you want to cancel selected, from the Edit menu, select either Clear or Cancel Message.
  
  
• Outlook Express for Windows: With the article that you want to cancel selected, from the Message menu, select Cancel Message.
  
  
• NewsWatcher, MT-NewsWatcher: While reading or selecting the message in the newsgroup's index, from the Special menu, choose Cancel Article.
  
  
• nn: While reading the message within the newsgroup, press  C  (Shift-c).
  
  
• tin: While reading the message within the newsgroup, press  D  (Shift-d). You must be reading the message, not just have it highlighted on the article selection screen.
  
  
• trn: While reading the message within the newsgroup, press  C  (Shift-c). This will make the message unavailable to other readers of the newsgroup, even though it will appear on a thread listing.
  
  
• Windows Trumpet: View the article, then, from the menus, select Article/Cancel.

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