Mail Prints Blank

I just started experiencing this same problem on November 24. I know it's not the printer because I've had the same periodic problem on an HP and an Epson. Hard to isolate as it's not consistent. I did manage to get it to start printing body text once after unplugging and replugging the Epson printer, and once by quitting Mail and reopening. But it will only print for a few emails then they start turning up blank again (except for the header).

I had a new problem today and I wonder if it's related. Tried to cut and paste from a web page to Word and after pasting, nothing appears. Resolved this by quitting the programs and reopening. Bizarre. Wonder if there was a recent update that screwed stuff up? I'll be watching to see if you get any replies here.

Verify/repair the startup disk, as described in the following article:

The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?

Look for additional information that may be available in the form of error messages written to the Console:

1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Console.

2. From the File menu, choose either Open Console Log, or Open System Log, or both, so that Console displays the contents of both system.log and console.log.

3. Reproduce the problem and look at the bottom of the Console windows for messages that might be written there as a result.

I wonder whether this could be a font issue. You may use Font Book to validate fonts and resolve duplicates, for example.

You may also try trashing the Mail cache:

1. Quit Mail if it’s running.

2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Caches/.

3. Locate the Mail cache folder (not to be confused with the ~/Library/Mail folder where all your mail is stored) and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted after opening Mail and checking that all your mail is there, i.e. after making sure that you didn’t remove the ~/Library/Mail folder by mistake).

Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

I don't know if Roberle has had a chance to try this or not, but I tried as much of it as I could and am still printing blank emails. Here's what I did:

Had already tried Disk Utility repairs. That didn't work. (Tried it a second time and the results are listed below in Console messages.) Tried checking the console messages and I'll flow those in at the end of this message. I checked fonts and just found 2 duplicates of Courier so deleted the dupes. Looked for the mail cache but in ~/Library/Caches/ could find NOTHING with "mail" in the name. Didn't see anything in ~/Library/Mail that looked like "caches" and didn't want to delete anything there anyway. Is there somewhere else the Mail cache would be?

I found I can get the emails to print if I open the message in its own window, click the print button at the top of the window, click on Preview, THEN click the print button at the bottom of the Preview screen.

Here's what I got for Console messages. The System message was from an earlier time period so I'm not sure if it relates to the printing problem or not.

SYSTEM LOG

Nov 27 03:15:04 Kim-St-Ours-Computer cp: error processing extended attributes: Operation not permitted


CONSOLE LOG (Printed this going back to yesterday's printing problems.):

2007-11-26 17:36:34.997 Mail[1496] * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 26 17:36:36 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[1575]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 26 17:37:13 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[1575]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
2007-11-26 17:40:10.650 Mail[1496] * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
2007-11-26 17:40:13.057 Mail[1496] * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 26 17:40:15 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[1575]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 26 17:41:10 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[1575]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 26 17:56:28 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:28 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:28 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:29 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:31 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:36 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 17:56:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:52 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:53 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:53 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:53 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:55 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:00:59 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:02 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:02 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:02 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:02 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:58 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:58 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:58 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:01:59 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:00 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:03 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:04 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:04 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:05 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
Nov 26 18:02:05 Kim-St-Ours-Computer AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984.
(timer):Value undefined (result of expression $("#mmtabs").tabs) is not object.
Nov 27 00:30:57 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: NSDataMessageStore: couldn't find body
Nov 27 00:30:57 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: NSDataMessageStore: couldn't find body
Nov 27 00:30:57 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: NSDataMessageStore: couldn't find body
Nov 27 00:31:37 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:31:37 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:31:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:31:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:31:38 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:42 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:42 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:42 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:44 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:44 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:34:44 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 7-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:42:00 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:42:02 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary
Nov 27 00:42:04 Kim-St-Ours-Computer mdimportserver[2096]: * Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary

********
Disk Utility started.

Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Determining correct file permissions.
parent directory ./Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist

Permissions repair complete


The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume

Had already tried Disk Utility repairs. That didn't work. (Tried
it a second time and the results are listed below in Console messages.)

What the Console shows is that you just repaired permissions. You appear to not have tried verifying/repairing the disk itself (i.e. the filesystem)...

Failed to decode 8-bit data, treating as binary

This error in the Console indicates a problem with the message encoding, which may cause problems to both Mail and Spotlight (mdimportserver). I get these occasionally with spam, rarely with legit messages...

AL_CX11-1: ATSFontGetPostScriptName failed: error -984

This indicates a font issue that apparently only affects a process called AL_CX11-1, which I guess has something to do with the printer driver. I don’t know how to troubleshoot that. You may find the following article helpful:

Font Management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther

You may also try starting up in Safe Mode. Not sure you’ll be able to print if booted in Safe Mode, though.

in ~/Library/Caches/ could find NOTHING with "mail" in the name.

Are you sure you’re looking in ~/Library/Caches/ and not in /Library/Caches/? Is your profile accurate, i.e. are you running Mac OS X 10.4.8, as it says?

I'm having the exact same problem and it started right after the last update. Very frustrating and wastes paper and time!

On a separate mail note, I also have emails randomly disappear, especially when I file one in a mailbox and then undo it (command+Z). Sometimes they re-appear in my inbox, sometimes they are gone forever.

Thanks for the help. The CX-11 is my Epson color laser printer.

Found the right folder and tried moving the mail cache to the desktop. The next time I printed an email it did print. But the time after that the only part that printed (after the top addresser) was the icon of the attachment--none of the text. That was a new one! Tried verifying the disk and it processes then asks for my password then gives me this error:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 1246779 instead of 1246777)
Volume Header needs minor repair
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair


The "Repair Disk" button doesn't highlight because it didn't finish verifying, so how do I repair it?

Just a comment that yes, this problem started for me after the last update too.

11/21 MacOSX update (PowerPC) 10.4.11

Lexmark T430

The "Repair Disk" button doesn't highlight because it didn't finish verifying

That’s not why it appears greyed out. Actually, it did finish verifying — and the process that did the verification reported failure on exit ( not that it couldn’t exit) and that the volume needs to be repaired.

In my first post I provided a link to an article that explains what you can verify/repair with Disk Utility (not just permissions) and that refers to other articles (some of which are also available from Disk Utility Help) that explain how to do it for a reason...

That doesn’t appear to be the cause of the printing problem, though...

Okay, I rebooted from my backup drive and repaired the disk, then rebooted from the original hard drive again. You're right--it didn't fix the problem. (Errors found and fixed were Volume Bit Map minor repair, Invalid volume free block count, Volume Header minor repair.) It's still printing just the header and the icon for the attachments, no text unless I do the whole open in a second window and preview thing and print from that. My waste paper pile is stacking up. I'm thinking Apple made a boo-boo in their last update release. Hope they get it fixed soon. I'll keep monitoring this thread and hope someone comes up with an answer. Many thanks to everyone who's responded!