How to save a 123greetings.com card to your computer?

How to save a 123greetings.com card to your computer?

All of you at some time in your life would have received an e-card which you cherished and wanted to keep with you forever. I did and I still like saving my cards. Years ago I used to have Dreamweaver flash on my computer and I could find the card flash movie in my internet Explorer temp files, from where I used to save/edit it using Dreamweaver. But the card company has got smarter and the flash file no longer gets saved when you do a ‘Save Webpage Complete’ and nor does it show in your temp files.

Since 123greetings.com is today’s leading free e-cards company, this article is about saving a 123greeting card movie only.You can definitely try this with other e-cards and it should work the same way. Even though the card company says your card will be available for the next 30 days, these days most cards are still on their server for almost a year. Provided you have the email with the card number, you can track it and find it out.

Let’s start saving our e-card. The key is to find the actual .swf (flash) file playing in the card. This is very easy and even a non-technical person can do this.

Disclaimer: I will explain saving it via Internet Explorer (IE) or Google Chrome. I don’t have Firefox but it should work the same way in Firefox too. Also, as obvious, you will need a working internet connection to save your card.

STEP 1: OPEN THE CARD YOU WANT TO SAVE

Open the card by clicking on the card link in the email or by directly copy pasting the link in your internet browser’s address bar. For cards that no longer open with the link, copy the card number from the email and search for it in the 123greetings.com search box to locate the card. See pic below. In the email it says:

You can view it by clicking here:

http://www.123greetings.com/send/view/CARD_NUMBER

Search card with card number

STEP 2: RIGHT CLICK >> VIEW SOURCE

Let the card load till you see the ‘Play button’. Right-click anywhere on the page outside the card and the advertisement area. Click on ‘View Source’ or press ‘V’ on the keyboard. See pics below. This will open a new tab/window with coding of the card webpage.

In Google Chrome

In Internet Explorer

Step 3: LOCATE THE .swf FILE WITH CTRL+F

Go to the source code page and press Ctrl and F keys together (CTRL + F) to open the search box. Type .swf in the search box and hit ‘Enter’ on keyboard. Make sure you type a dot before swf. You will see .swf highlighted in the coding file. See pic. The third one is your card file. Keep this page open.

This is how it looks in Chrome.  Click on pic to see enlarged view.

This is how it looks in Internet Explorer.  Click on pic to see enlarged view.

Step 4: CREATE AN HTML FILE WITH THE CARD LINK

Now open a new notepad file. Type or copy paste this in the file:

 <a href="">My Card</a>

Click File >> Save As>> myfavcard.html (give any name to the file and change the file extension from .txt to .html). Choose a folder to save the file. See pic. For those who understand this, we do this when the ‘Save target as’ option doesn't work directly.

Save file as .html. Click on pic to see enlarged view.

Step 5: COPY PASTE THE CARD LINK IN NOTEPAD HTML FILE

Now go back to the Source code file where we had located the card link. Copy the card link. Come back and paste the link in the notepad HTML file within the qutoes, as shown below. The link is the text right after ‘crdName=’up to .swf. Save the notepad HTML file again.

Tips: Use Alt+Tab keys to move between windows.

Use Ctrl+S to save file OR Click on File >> Save.

Copy the card link from the Source Code File. Click on pic to see enlarged view.

Step 6: SAVE THE TARGET FILE AND YOU ARE DONE

This is the last step. You can close all other windows if you want. Go to the folder where you had saved the HTML file in Step 5. Open the HTML file. Right click on the text (My Card) in the file and click on ‘Save Target As’. It will show a download window and another window where you can change the file name if you want. Then click on Save to save the flash card movie file to your computer.

My Saved HTML file on my Desktop.

The Target file is your actual card movie. Click on pic to see enlarged view.

Save the Flash movie file to your computer. Click on pic to see enlarged view.

Download Complete means the file is now saved on your comp. Click on pic to see enlarged view.

STEP 7 (OPTIONAL): SAVE THE ORIGINAL CARD AS A PRINTABLE .PDF FILE


Many of us will have emotional values attached to the message written in the card by the sender. Every card has a ‘Save as pdf’ link below it. Click on that to save the card as a printable .pdf file. (This type of file opens only in Adobe Reader or any PDF reader). The whole card will be saved as such and the last frame of the movie is saved in the printable .pdf file.

Save original card with names and message as .pdf file

Hope this is helpful. If you have any questions or get stuck at any point, ask me in the comments or send me an email from the ‘Contact’ tab above.