Printing Tools for Thunderbird improve email printouts
The Printing Tools extension for the Thunderbird email client improves how emails are printed on the system.
If you print out emails regularly or just occasionally using Thunderbird, you know that you cannot really change what is being printed.
While you can make a couple of modifications to the page mode and scale, there is not really an option to change what is being included and what not.
The Thunderbird extension Printing Tools provides you with an impressive set of features to change that. Once installed, you may want to open the options of the extension to configure it to your liking.
It displays the preferences in five different tabs that are filled to the brim with options.
The Miscellaneous tab alone hold more than a dozen options that provide you with options to hide header information or images, change the maximum width of text, or change the date format that is added to the print out.
That's not all though as you can also hide inline attachments, add the folder name the email is stored in or set borders around email headers to distinguish them better from the actual contents.
The style tab provides you with options to set a desired font type and size, and change the color and size of quoted text in the printout.
There are also options to change the order of header items, and to set font types and sizes as well as other information when you are printing out address book information.
Last but not least, it allows you to bypass the dialog window when printing, and to hide the print progress bar s well.
You can test the modifications that you are making by selecting File > Print Preview from the top menu after you have selected an email to see how they have changed the printout.
A hard copy of an old printout comes in handy in this case, as you can compare it directly to the new print layout.
Since you are not printing by using the preview option, you can go back to the options to make additional modifications until you get it right.
Verdict
If you are using Thunderbird and print out emails regularly or occasionally, you may like what the Printing Tools extension has to offer.
It allows you to customize the printout in several important ways. Especially the option to hide headers, change the font type and size, and use the global printing options to bypass the dialog window should come in handy for many users of the email client.
PrintingTools works in SeaMonkey as well.
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!