How do I remove addresses from an email message for printing or forwarding?

When you forward an email message, that message becomes part of the body of your new message. That implies that you can edit it to your heart's content. Just click on the text you want to change or remove ... and change or remove it. That applies equally well to the body of the message as the headers.

So not only can you remove the list of original recipients, but you can, in fact, change the text of the message you're forwarding.

Scary, huh?

In some cases, depending on your email program, the mail you're forwarding will not show up in the body of your message, but rather will show up as an attachment. That's typically due to mixing email formats - forwarding a "Rich Text" formatted message as an "HTML" message. Again, depending on the mail program, you should be able to change the format of your message, or perhaps select an option to not make attachments of forwarded messages.

Printing is more difficult because be the message cannot be edited, or if it can, the ability to edit may not include the message headers.

Here's what I do:

• I tell my mail program to forward the message. It creates a new message with the message I want to forward in the body.

• I select-all in the body of that message (typically CTRL-A will do it), and then hit Edit/Copy to copy the entire message text to the clipboard.

• Then i fire up Microsoft Word (for rich text or HTML mails) or Notepad (for plain text mails) and paste in the email message from the clipboard.

• I edit as I see fit - removing the recipient list, perhaps.

• Then I can print from within Word or Notepad exactly what I want.

It's a little cumbersome the first couple of times, but it's not that terribly difficult, and gives you total control over what gets printed.