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How do I print a list of emails from my email program?

Question:

I can’t seem to find an answer for this question so I’m asking you. How can
I print a list of the emails that are in my AOL email message inbox, sent
folder, or saved, or old message folder? I put in a search for a certain
person, and I want to print the list of emails from a few years back to the
present for that person that came up in that search. I can’t figure out how to
do it. Thanks so much for any advice.

In this excerpt from Answercast 66, I look at the difficulties involved in
printing a list from current email programs.

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Printing online email lists

Well, the bad news is that, to be honest, I’m actually not aware of a way to
do it.

Normally, my very first question is, well… what email program are you
using? And, of course, I assume you’re using AOL’s.

Printing not provided

Unfortunately, as it turns out, of all the email programs that I’m aware of
– none of them provide the ability to print the list that you might see when
you’re just using the email program: that list of subject lines, date received,
all that kind of thing. It seems to be an onscreen feature only.

And yea, that is kind of odd when you think about it. I’m surprised that
hasn’t been implemented in some email program somewhere. I know you’re not the
first person to ask me for it.

Screen shots

So, the only solution that I’ve been able to come up with (and it’s not
elegant by any stretch) is to take a screen shot of the screen
that’s showing you the list of email messages that you’re wanting to print.
Then use that screen shot and print it.

There are a couple of ways to go about doing this. I have an article about
What’s a
screen shot and how do I make one?
” That runs through the very basics.

  • That uses the Windows “print screen” functionality; which
    basically makes a copy of your entire screen as a picture and puts that on your
    clipboard.

  • Then you can open a program like Paint, and paste that picture into
    Paint.

  • Then edit it somewhat, probably, to remove the extraneous information that
    you don’t want to be printed out.

  • Then in Paint just print the picture of the list.

Like I said, it ain’t pretty – that’s for sure but it might get the job
done. The problem is; if you’ve got a lengthy list, a list that’s going to be
longer than your screen is high, the only solution that I’m aware of to do this
is to repeat that process multiple times.

So, maybe one of my readers will come up with a fancy solution using some
other email program but at this point, I just don’t have an answer for you
other than – it can’t really be done; at least not easily.

Do this

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11 comments on “How do I print a list of emails from my email program?”

  1. Once you’ve got your screenshot/s, you could maybe run the images through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program to create an editable text format list and then send it to a text editor such as Word for saving?

    Reply
  2. If your email porgram does not offer a print feature you can run Backup or Export to get a file.
    Then, use Notepad to edit and print it.

    Reply
  3. What I do is open Word from Microsoft Office. I then just copy and paste (either part or the whole email) into it and print. Using the screen shot will only give you what you can see on the monitor whereas if you happen to have a long email, you can “copy all” and paste into Word. I agree this is a long and tedious process if you have a lot of emails but this is my best solution to the problem. Hope this helps.

    Reply
  4. Outlook 2010 will print a listing of email subjects if you print in Table Style. File-Print-Tablestyle. Memo style prints a selected email.

    Reply
  5. I’ve had this problem many times before. I’ve found the best way to print email is the copy/paste method into MS Word. It will not hold up as evidence in a court of Law though if that’s what you need it for.
    If this is the case, you have to have a Lawyer & detectives involved and submit everything (Very involved) Or subpoena the ISP/Email provider.
    Good luck, J.

    Reply
  6. there is a small free program called DBEXTRACT

    IT PRODUCES a list of each inbox, delete and

    sent messages into a file that can be printed.

    Reply
  7. Maybe I don’t understand the question, but you can print just about any web page from the browser (meaning, IE, Chrome and Firefox). In Chrome, the page can be printed to PDF. My results were pretty clean.

    Seems like a lot of work to do all those screenshots, but as I said, maybe I don’t understand the question.

    Reply
  8. Here is how I take the best picture that I can obtain to solve the problem in this news article.

    To print a list of emails from any sender or from any month on my PC.

    There is a free camera in VMN Toolbox.

    Arrange your emails according to “FROM”

    Select the name you require

    Open VMN Toolbox camera

    There is a yellow frame that can be sized according to what you wish to capture – that will appear.

    Size it correctly, click the shutter and then paste it onto a blank Word Document.

    Print it.

    Done in seconds.

    Reply

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