Printing from Apple Mail
One of the “charms” of using Apple computers is that Apple reckons that you can discover the finer points of using their software by stumbling over the niffty features of programs when you first need them, rather than drawing your attention to them in the “help” screens.
For as long as I can remember, probably since I first switched to the Mac in fact, I have been irritated and puzzled about why sometimes when I print out an e-mail, the print is ridiculously small on the paper, although on the screen it looks fine, it prints like this:
On other occasions, a mail would print just fine:
The Apple Mail help is no help at all:
That proposed solution doesn’t work at all in this case.
I discovered that the size of the text printed out depended on the page width of the window in which the mail was opened before I printed it – the wider the window, the smaller the typeface. And there the matter rested – until today, when I stumbled across Apple Tech Note number 303297, which describes how to make the printed text size independent of the window-size. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, here’s a picture of the relevant setting:
For some reason, “scale message to fit” had previously been selected, and that was the cause of the amazing shrinking text.
February 3rd, 2007 at 18:02:55
Mine says “Keep the same apparent font size”. And I hardly ever print an email. Longterm Notes user.
February 3rd, 2007 at 22:02:15
We don’t print many e-mails, but sometimes Ruth insists that her Sysadmin brings her the mail down to the lounge, when she can’t be fagged to go upstairs and use her Mac
(Ruth, who is reading this as I write it, says that’s not true – her Sysadmin hassles her with the mail)
After I discovered the settings, I found Ruth’s iMac was set up with “Keep the same apparent font size” and she had also had some problems with printing mail, so for now they are both set as in the screenshot.