About 6 months ago some major virus problems were experienced requiring a reinstall of Windows XP on my computer. Since then I have had an infrequent, but nevertheless annoying, problem when printing emails from Outlook Express. Occasionally when printing emails the size of the font is almost unreadably small, even though it appears in the normal font size on screen. The problem occurs on about 5% of the occasions that I print emails. There seems to be no pattern – it occurs with both inwards and outwards mail items and is not consistent for any particular email address. Are there any ideas for fixing this annoying problem?

Inconsistent problems such as the one you describe are often the most difficult to diagnose, primarily because there are several variables at play which could be causing the behaviour. Furthermore, it is difficult to replicate the problem on-demand to determine whether attempts at fixing the problem have been successful. However, there are some troubleshooting steps we can undertake to narrow down the problem. From the description of the problem, you mention that it is not consistent for a particular email address (so the problem may occur for some emails sent from a particular sender, but not for others). The first thing we need to consider is whether the problem is consistent across emails themselves. For example, if you print an email message and it experiences the problem, if you then print that same email at a later date does it encounter the same problem? If the problem is consistent with the same email message, then this indicates something is wrong with the message itself. Sometimes the text which is included within an email message displays correctly on screen, but does not print correctly. This generally occurs when you have an email message which is formatted using HTML. An HTML formatted email message allows the sender to include special formatting in the message, such as different font sizes, font styles and embedded elements such as pictures. In fact, HTML email messages are actually just web pages in the form of an email message, so this allows the sender to format the message using any formatting which is available on a web page (which allows for quite a richly formatted email message to be sent). However, when printing HTML emails the formatting can go awry, as occasionally the email program will not know how to render the HTML correctly for printing. This is not a problem with purely text-based email messages as, much like the name implies, that is purely text with no formatting so there is only one way it can be printed. However, emails with formatting can be printed in various different ways, depending on how the computer understands the formatting. In this case I don’t think that there is much you can do to resolve the issue itself, since it is inherent in how Outlook Express is reading those formatted email messages. However, there are a few workarounds. First, you could copy and paste the email from Outlook Express into a Word document. Should you find that the text is too small once pasted you can then use Word to increase the font size prior to printing. Second, you could investigate using a different email client (such as the free, open source Mozilla Thunderbird – www.mozilla.com/thunderbird) as different email clients will render the emails in different ways.

However, if you find that the problem is inconsistent when printing the same email message (such as the issue occurs when printing the email message on one occasion, but not on another) the problem is not specifically related to that email message but instead something wrong with the Outlook Express print configuration. The most likely cause is that somehow the print size has been set to a smaller font size. Why this has occurred is unknown, but you should check the configuration to ensure that it is restored to the proper setting. Outlook Express inherits the print text size from Internet Explorer, so open Internet Explorer then go to the “View” menu > “Text Size” and change the size to “Medium”. Close Internet Explorer and then try to print messages from Outlook Express to see whether the problem has been resolved. This setting change should have only worked if every message was printing in the incorrect text size, as it is a global setting. However, it is possible that for some reason the setting was only applying to certain email messages and this will reset the setting to apply globally to all messages. It would also be worthwhile verifying the font size for reading email messages in Outlook Express. In Outlook Express, go to the “Tools” menu > “Options”. Near the bottom of the window click the “Fonts” button. In the Fonts window that appears, ensure the “Font size” has been set to “Medium” then click OK. Click OK to close the main Options window. Try printing the email again.

At this point if you still have difficulties then please contact me again for further advice, as we will need to delve into more troubleshooting procedures.