Big Sur printing emails with graphics: fail or very slow

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Level 1

16 points

Big Sur printing emails with graphics: fail or very slow

Attempting to print certain emails containing graphics does does not appear to work right after upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur. (Running 11.2.1)

Sometimes, the attempt to print fails completely.

Usually it generates a "generating content to print..." message, which can take up o 60 seconds before I actual get a print screen. (Screen shot attached.)

Attempting to print to PDF displays "generating content to PDF..." with similar results.

Text emails to not appear to have this problem.

Catalina did not have this problem.

How to fix this?

Thank you.

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Feb 13, 2021 12:45 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

jdo_apple

Community Specialist

Feb 16, 2021 4:15 PM in response to mediacanyon

mediacanyon,

Thanks for sharing that additional information.

To further isolate the source of the issue, try starting your Mac in safe mode and check for the issue there: How to use safe mode on your Mac

Also, to determine if the issue is user-specific or system-wide, create a new admin user account and try printing emails there: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Thanks!

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Answer 2

Feb 16, 2021 8:51 AM in response to mediacanyon

Hey there mediacanyon,

We understand you're experiencing an issue with printing emails on your Mac after upgrading to macOS Big Sur, and we'd like to share some resources that can help.

Get started here: Solve printing problems on Mac

This page may also help: Reset the Mac printing system to solve a problem

Cheers!

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Answer 3

mediacanyon Author

Level 1

16 points

Feb 16, 2021 12:31 PM in response to barberlives123

Thank you for your assistance.

I tried the various recommendations, including a printing system reset, but nothing solved the problem. (I also tried an SMC reset.)

I did use some of the suggestions to gather more info.

Other apps print graphic-intensive content just fine, including a large JPEG via Preview, Keynote slides, and a Pages doc into which I copied/pasted an email that generated the error message when I tried to print it directly from Mail.

I also discovered that when I try to work with a graphic-intensive message in Mail, the Activity Monitor shows a very big jump in "% CPU" utilization for WindowServer, which declines when I turn my attention to text emails.

What conclusions can I draw from all this?

Again, thank you!

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Answer 4

mediacanyon Author

Level 1

16 points

Feb 20, 2021 2:05 PM in response to jdo_apple

Hello,

I restarted in Safe mode, same user. The print worked fine.

Restarted in Normal mode, and now the print works fine, there, too.

The journey into Safe mode and back out appears to have solved the problem.

Thank you.

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Answer 5

CarlAVII

Community Specialist

Feb 21, 2021 12:32 PM in response to mediacanyon

mediacanyon,

We're glad to hear starting in safe mode seems to have resolved the issue for you.

Feel free to post again if you have any questions in the future.

Take care!

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Big Sur printing emails with graphics: fail or very slow

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