I'll start with one that has made all the information on the forum easier for me to retain as a resource, without having to go back & search for topics. This works for PM's also for in/sent/outboxes. This is especially handy when you are working on a project and want to save information from lots of different topics & PM's. (I only know this working in MS Word-so you can try it in others)
1. Open a new document in MS Word. For saving forum posts set the layout to 'landscape', for saving PM's it can stay at 'portrait'.
2. Save document with whatever title.
3. Go to forum post or PM, and highlight from the beginning of the top cell of that post (or page). examples:
Saving a whole page of a thread, you would highlight from before the topic title to the end of the last post at bottom of page.
Saving one part of a post, you would highlight from before where it says Author to end of message box.
Saving a PM (Private Message) you would highlight from before the word 'From' to end of message box.
4. Go to 'Copy' to copy it. (for most you can right click for this on highlighted section)
5. Go to the opened document in Word, and click 'Paste'
6. Then Save.
You can then go on to save as many under or over that post as you like.
This is also especially handy too if you get a lot of PM's, you can use it as a reference point as to who you have replied to and who you havent. Delete them as you reply to them. Or, if your PM boxes get too full, and there are many PM's you want to keep...you can archive them this way too.
If you want to shortcut further... create a shortcut from the file you created to your desktop. That way you can open it quickly even when offline. (warning: dont creat too many shortcuts on desktop though, it makes your startup slower.)