Abstract: An improved messaging system (100, 900) enables a message recipient to take notes electronically while retrieving messages, such as by electronically extracting and separately recording a portion of a received message in a scratchpad area (250, 1050) of his or her mailbox (111, 911) or by dictating into a telephone (102, 103), typing on a terminal (902, 903) keyboard, or entering on a Touch-Tone telephones' keypad, words and/or numbers, into the scratchpad area, for subsequent use by the message recipient. The messaging system then enables the message recipient either to retrieve the electronic notes from the scratchpad area, or to automatically place a call to a telephone number that is contained in the electronic notes in the scratchpad area. An improved graphical user interface (915) provides the message recipient with easy access to, and control over, this functionality of the messaging system.