How to print an email on a Mac

How to print an email on a Mac: open the message in Apple Mail and press Cmd+P, pick the printer and click Print; Outlook for Mac and webmail in Safari use the same dialog. The dialog also saves a PDF through its PDF menu. For .eml and .msg files, SaveMail opens them in the browser and sends them to the same print dialog.

How to print an email on a Mac from Apple Mail

1. Click the message in the list, or open it in its own window by double-clicking.
2. Press Cmd+P or choose File, Print.
3. Choose the printer. If the dialog is small, click Show Details to see Orientation, Scale and Pages.
4. Set a page range to skip quoted history, or leave All.
5. Click Print.

Select several messages with Cmd-click and press Cmd+P to print them as one job, one after another. Mail always prints the header block (From, Subject, Date, To) above the body; there is no checkbox to remove it, which comes up below.

Have the email as a file (EML, MSG, MBOX)? Convert it to PDF in your browser: nothing is uploaded.

Print email on a Mac from Outlook, Gmail and other apps

Whatever the app, the lower-left PDF button in the macOS print dialog turns the job into a file. That is the way to keep a record instead of paper, and save an email as PDF on Mac covers the Export as PDF shortcut that skips the dialog entirely.

Print an email without the header on a Mac

Apple Mail has no option to drop the From, To and Subject lines from a printout, and the same is true of Gmail's print view. Two workarounds, depending on how clean the result must be:

1. Copy the body. Select the message text, copy it, paste into TextEdit, Pages or Notes, and print from there. Formatting survives reasonably well; inline images sometimes do not.
2. Print a page range. If the header takes the first page on its own (rare), print from page 2.

Consider whether you really want the header gone. For anything that may be used as a record, the header lines are the evidence of who sent what and when, and a PDF with the header is what a reviewer expects. The email archiving guide explains why Date and Message-ID matter.

Print an .eml or .msg file on a Mac

Mail opens .eml files, but .msg files from Outlook do not open on a Mac without Outlook installed, and an .eml that someone forwarded as an attachment often opens as a blank preview. SaveMail opens EML, EMLX, MSG and MBOX in Safari, Chrome or Firefox:

1. Drop the file on the converter.
2. The message renders with From, To, Cc, Date, Subject and Message-ID, the body with inline images, and an attachment list with names and sizes. Compact mode hides quoted replies and signatures for a shorter printout.
3. Press Save as PDF: the macOS print dialog opens, and you can pick your printer there instead of the PDF option.

Parsing happens in the tab; nothing is uploaded and no account is needed. Attachments download one by one or as a ZIP, to be printed from Preview or Pages. See open an MSG file for what else works with Outlook files on a Mac.

Fixes for common Mac printing problems

• Right edge is cut. In the dialog, set Orientation to landscape or reduce Scale under the Mail or Safari section.
• Prints one reply, not the thread. In Mail, each message is its own item; in Gmail, use the thread-level printer icon.
• Attachments did not print. They never do. Open each in Preview and print. The Windows version of Outlook can include them; on a Mac you print them separately. Details on print an email with attachments.
• Gray boxes instead of images. Remote images were blocked; click Load Remote Content in the message banner, then print.

Frequently asked questions