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by nu4ever

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I have been trying to print out a e-mail that I receieved. When printing it out it cuts some of the letters off of the words. I thought at first it was just one message as it turns out it does it on all the messages. I have tried to adjust the margins and setting and still get the same thing. I then forwared it to a few friends and it works just fine for them. I then reinstalled the printer and still the same thing.
Any ideas would be of great help.

30 replies

by ozi eagle

Hi,

Just a thought - does your printer work OK on other print jobs?
Maybe you are running out of ink / toner, or yur inkjet nozzles are on the way out.

by rcom

You didn't say if it was only happening with email. I'm assuming the missing letters are at the end of sentences. Try this as a test. Open the email highlight the text, copy and paste it into another program like word and print it from there to see if the same problem occurs.

by nu4ever

RCOM I did say that it was for my e-mails only. I have tried to copy and paste it into a word doc and other files. It prints out just fine. When it prints it cuts off the firsr to letters on the left side.

by glyall

check your printer margins.
For your Browers FILE> PAGE SETUP...
the default is top, left, right and bottom areabout0.5
I set my margins all to 0.1
IE will not allow less then 0.25 for top, left and right and the bottom to0.21
In Mozilla (full) and Foxfire I can set them all to 0.1

Good Luck

by softcorp.us

Questions and comments:

1. You probably know this already. Outlook Express uses IE to print, even for plain text emails. So, margin settings come from IE's Page Setup. When you adjusted margins, I presume this is how you did it. Correct?

2. What versions of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are you using?

3. What is the make and model of your printer?

This may be a printer driver bug. The printer driver provides printable area information to the Windows application. Each printer has its own printable area. The top, left, bottom, and right non-printable areas vary for each printer, as does the horiz. and vert. dots per inch, etc. I have observed margin calculation problems caused by printer driver bugs for some printers. The app in question worked fine with all printers except for certain ones. Some/all Epson and Canon ink jets if I recall correctly.

Suggestion 1: Try to obtain and install an updated printer driver from the manufacturer. Perhaps this hypothetical bug is corrected.

Suggestion 2: Try to use a substitute printer driver. For example, HP LaserJet 4 printers can use an HP LaserJet 3 driver. If this workaround works, you can define a special printer icon with this other driver just for your Outlook Express printing and continue using your existing printer icon for all other printing.

Suggestion 3: Upgrade to the most recent version of Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. Perhaps the newer OE and IE work better with your printer/driver.

Suggestion 4: Change to another email client. Mozilla Thunderbird is free and works very well. I personally like OE but switched away from it some time ago out of security concerns.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck!

-----Steve Jackson

CEO
Software Corporation (Softcorp)
http://www.softcorp.us

by abf31

I had the same problem as nu4ever. Emls printed from Outlook Express in any format, any encoding, any printer, any driver, came out without the characters at left edge of text. Solution is to go to Int Explorer >page setup, and INCREASE the left margin. What stumped me for a while was that DECREASING the left margin doesn't work.

by ozi eagle

Hi,

Comment on answer 7.

Maybe the page margins were set outside the printable area of the printer and by increasing the page margin you brought it back into the printable area.

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