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I want to be able to print an email with an attachment. The attachment is on the bottom of the email. I don't want to exactly print the attachment but the email so I can see that it has an attachment. Most of the emails that I receive have the attachments on the bottom of the screen, I want them in the body so I can print them.

Attachments are a source of great confusion for many people. In concept they're very, very simple. Excruciatingly simple, as a matter of fact.

Then some email programs try to get "helpful", and all heck breaks loose.

Attachments are nothing more than files that accompany an email message. There's nothing special about them, there's nothing magical. It's just a file. Save it to disk, and you can do anything you want with that file, assuming you have the proper tools on your machine to act on it.

Some email programs try to get fancy when they display an email message that has accompanying attachments. Outlook Express, for example, will notice if the attachments appear to be images, and if they are, it will helpfully display those images below the email message body. The problem is that while it looks like the images are below the message, in fact they are not. That very same message viewed in a different email program (say, Microsoft Office's Outlook) will not display the images below the body. Outlook will only display the icons that indicate that the message has attachments. If you want to open them, you'll need to do so explicitly.

It's a source of frustration and confusion for people moving from Outlook Express to Outlook, because they find Outlook Express's behavior convenient.

It's also a source of frustration for people attempting to send mail that will look the same everywhere.

HTML mail and Rich Text mail can get even more confusing, because images that appear in-line in one person's mail program may appear as separate attachments to someone else looking at the same message. Or worse ... the entire email message may appear as an attachment.

And so it goes with printing. There's no standard way to print an email message that has attachments. Some programs will print an indicator that there are attachments. Others will not. Some will print the attachment, if they know how, others will print a placeholder or nothing at all.

So in short, there is no blanket answer to what you're looking for. You'll have to experiment with your email program to see if it supports printing email the way you want. Be sure to look for "Page Setup" and advanced printing types of options. Your email program may call them something else, but they hold the keys to what will be possible.

Article C2408 - August 20, 2005 « »

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Leo Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

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Recent Comments
29 Comments
Rosie Barron
March 13, 2011 11:01 AM

I WANT TO JUST PRINT THE ATTACHMENTS HOW DO I DO THAT WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THREW THEM ONE BY ONE?

I'm not aware of an easy way. You need to open each attachment in the program that knows how to print it. (You could TRY saving all attachments to a folder, multi-selecting them and dragging them and dropping them on your printer icon.)
Leo
13-Mar-2011

davon
July 26, 2011 8:32 PM

How do I print only the attachment received from an email.

Open the attachment, and then print it from within whatever program is used to open it.
Leo
27-Jul-2011

Mark J
July 26, 2011 8:48 PM

@Davon
This article answers your question.

Lisa
November 15, 2011 3:01 PM

My printer prints from documents, excell etc..when I am in my emails it will print the attachments.. but if I just want to print the email itself or a regular email without an attachment it is printing mumbo jumbo.. what can I do .. it did not do this a week ago... #2 my windows icon that is usually on the bottom that I click to open computer, documents..etc and shows the time , programs running etc is off to the right now.. how do I get it back to the bottom..I tried to left click and drag - restart the pc .. nothing is working.

Mark J
November 15, 2011 10:59 PM

@Lisa
As a workaround for #1, I would copy and past the text from the email into a text editor such as Word, or Notepad,
#2 Here's an article from Ask Leo on the subject
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