An Easy Way to Print Mail - Do it Automatically

Several students in my Outlook courses have asked how to print mail automatically. They need to keep a hard-copy record of every email message they receive at work, or every message related to a particular subject. Perhaps you do too.

It is possible to do this job by hand, but manually printing email messages isn't the best use of your time, and it is certainly boring. Right-clicking a message, then selecting Print isn't a hard task, just tedious when you have to do it dozens or even hundreds of times a day.

And if you need to print only certain messages, instead of every one, you need to apply some thought to each email that comes in, distracting you from the rest of your work, and sucking up your precious time.

If your organization has an IT department with some Outlook developers, I'm sure they could put together a script to handle the task for you. But that will likely cost many hours of developer time and require you to help test and tweak everything. There has to be a better way.

The "better way" that I found is to use the Auto Print add-in from Sperry Software to manage printing email.

This add-in addresses every way I can think of to print messages, from the most basic--printing every message that arrives, to only printing messages that land in certain folders and contain specific text (a project name, for example).

Auto Print can also print attachments, and go through the folders you specify to print messages that are there now, letting you catch up on your printing.

I don't have a specific need to print my messages, but I've tested the Outlook 2007 version of Auto Print, and once you have it configured the way you want it, it works very well.

Getting Auto Print

Installing Auto Print is easy. You buy it direct from the Sperry Software website.

While you are placing your order, if you enter this code: PK4CZK97, you will get a 5% discount on the purchase of Auto Print and any other Sperry Software products.

Click here to go directly to the Auto Print page on the Sperry Software website.

Once you place your order, you receive a message with a link to the download page and another with your product key. You can use Auto Print for up to 14 days before entering the key, so go ahead and download it as soon as the first message arrives.

Follow the instructions in the message to install Auto Print.

Configuring Auto Print

Once you have Auto Print installed, you need to configure it. This is the place where I was a little confused at first. Because Auto Print is so flexible, you have to set several options to get it to print mail exactly the way you want it to.

For the most basic action--printing every message that arrives--here's what you need to do:

Once you have Auto Print installed and Outlook restarted, click the Sperr Software Add-Ins button on the Outlook toolbar. This opens the Add-in Configuration dialog box.

Set the checkbox next to Auto Print to activate the add-in. This makes the rest of the settings available.

On the Autoprint Incoming Email tabbed page, click Choose Folder. Because we want it to print all incoming messages, select Mailbox in the Select Folder dialog box that appears, then click OK. You will see a message that Outlook needs to be restarted, but you don't need to do it until after you finish configuring and are ready to print mail messages.

In the Filter Rules section, select All Incoming Emails.

In the What to Print section, set the Print the Email checkbox to print just the messages.

Note:

Click OK to close the dialog box. Don't forget to restart Outlook so the print mail changes you made can take effect.

Once you restart Outlook, all incoming messages will automatically be sent to the printer. You'll save time and energy while reducing mistakes.

If you need to print mail messages, Auto Print is a definite win.

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