EDRINGTON: Printing emails minus the ads

Kathe Bridges wrote to ask how to print received Gmail messages

without including all the surrounding advertising text.

Well, unfortunately, Web-based email services offer no built-in

provision for separating the message from the ads. What I do is

mouse-select the message text that I want to print, copy it with

Ctrl+C, and then paste it into a word processing document with


Once the target text has been thus copied, I can edit it in

various ways before printing it out. I rarely receive an email that

couldn't benefit from being spell-checked.

Bonnie Rizzuto wrote to say that when she sends a photo as an

email attachment the recipient often says a print-out of the

picture is very tiny.

Well, there are a number of factors to consider here. If you

send a photo that is intended only for viewing on a recipient's

monitor, a screen resolution of 96 DPI (dots per inch) is quite

acceptable. However, if the picture is to be printed on paper, the

resolution should be set to a minimum of 300 DPI.

Still, these numbers may not help in telling you what the actual

size of the print-out will be, unless you are an experienced

image-editing pro. The obvious solution is to make a print-out of

your own before emailing a photo ---- but this would require lots

of expensive printer ink.

My solution is to use Irfanview (free from Irfanview.com), which

lets me click on File>Print to see a graphic display of what a

picture's size will be on a sheet of 8.5x11-inch paper. The various

options for changing an image's print-out size are too numerous to

list here, but Irfanview comes with Help files that make everything

very easy. Call or email me if you need further help.

Hal McCawley wrote to ask if there is a way to make the Menu

items at the top of Outlook Express larger and easier to read. Yes.

Click on View>Layout>Customize Toolbar and choose Large


Speaking of Outlook Express, many readers have asked how to copy

saved messages to a new computer that has Windows Mail or Windows

Live Mail.

For each Outlook Express folder on your older computer (such as

Inbox) create a folder by right-clicking your desktop, choosing

New>Folder, and giving it the same name as its OE


Then drag and drop your OE Inbox messages into the folder you

just created.

Sadly, you cannot drag an actual OE folder; you can only drag

its contents.

Nonetheless, you can drag its entire contents en masse if you

select all messages by clicking the top and bottom ones with your

SHIFT key held down.

Finally, you can drag your desktop folders onto a USB flash

drive. Then connect the USB drive to your new PC and drag the

folders onto its desktop.

Henceforth, if you double-click one of the copied EML files, it

will open in Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail or OE, whichever is

on your new PC.

Contact Don Edrington at 949-891-1731 or



