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User profile for user: BobP1776
BobP1776 Author
User level: Level 3
698 points

10.9.1: Mail 7.1 screws up Print layout / formatting

Mail 7.1 in Mac OS X 10.9.1 screws up the layout of Messages you try to Print.


The two most common symptoms are that:


1) Blank space is inserted after the Headers and before the first line of the body of the message, so that the body of the message starts on the 2nd page. These are apparently blank lines (not a Page Break) because if you reduce the scaling below 100% the body of the message starts to show on the bottom of the 1st page, but still with a large chunk of bogus, blank space between it an the headers. And,


2) Extra blank pages are printed at the end of the message. This could be 1 to several blank pages. The number of extra blank pages is constant for each message, but differs between messages. These DO appear to be Page Breaks -- not simply a large chunk of blank lines.


These problems happen regardless of which printer is selected -- even happening if you Print via "Save As PDF".


These problems are NOT cured by Resetting the Printing System and then re-installing the printers.


For problem (1), the error seems to be uniquely associated with the use of "US Letter" Paper Size -- and only when used in Portrait orientation. If you switch to Landscape orientation, or if you use Portrait orientation with either US Legal Paper Size (which is larger) or A4 Paper Size (which is smaller) the bogus blank space after the Headers goes away.


However, problem (2) is NOT altered by switching either Paper Size or orientation. You still get the same number of bogus, blank pages at the end.


So far, I've only seen problem (1) when attempting to print Messages saved in my Sent folder. Problem (2) appears both with messages in the Inbox and Sent folders.


These problems only ever appear when the Message is printed. Messages viewed on screen have no such issues. The print formattting problems appear regardless of whether you Print the Message directly from the list of Messages in the Mail folder, or if you first double click on the Message to open it in its own window and THEN Print it.


Note that I have "Organize by Conversation" *NOT* selected in the view menu, so Reply and Forward messages include the prior text attached at the end -- forming one, longer Message. However, both problems (1) and (2) are exhibited on Messages which are comprised of a single Message *AND* Messages which included embedded text from prior Messages in their Reply or Forward chains. NOTE: Problem (1) only seems to show between the FIRST Headers and the start of the Message body -- not between any embedded Headers and the following text of their attached, Reply or Forward content.


Both problems also show both on Messages with attachments and Messages without attachments.


Has anyone found a way to cure these two problems?


Of course you can workaround problem (2) by adjusting the Print dialog to only print the non-blank pages. And you can kinda sorta work around problem (1) by selecting a Paper Size other than US Letter and then making judicious application of scaling in the Paper Handling sub-portion of the Print dialog, but these are manual steps you need to do DIFFERENTLY for EACH Message you want to print.


Deep sigh....

--Bob

MacBook Pro (17-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), Latest BootCamp

Posted on Dec 29, 2013 8:45 AM

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32 replies
User profile for user: Joe Bailey
Joe Bailey
User level: Level 6
12,227 points

Dec 29, 2013 9:29 AM in response to BobP1776

I cannot reproduce your problem in Mail 7.1 on OS X 10.9.1 on three different Macs. This leads me to believe the problem is unique to your Mac. As a diagnostic only...

  1. Safe Boot your Mac (Instructions are found in the Help Center on your Mac) - If the problem disappears there is an issue with some third party utility or driver.
  2. Boot from a clean test accout (you can create one in System Preferences > Users & Groups > clicking the plus sign at the bottom of the list of accounts). If the problem is not present in the test account then the problem is something that is being launched in your account and is likely found in System Preferences > Users & Groups > your account > Startup items, your ~/Library folder LaunchAgents, Internet Plug-Ins
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User profile for user: BobP1776
BobP1776 Author
User level: Level 3
698 points

Dec 31, 2013 8:50 AM in response to Alan Azem

Alan,

I've not found a fix yet. I've also spotted a 3rd Problem:


3) Mail 7.1 is incorrectly paginating what it does print -- I have instances where a line of a mail message is half printed at the bottom of one page and the other half printed at the top of the next page. This problem is NOT fixed by switiching to an alternate Page Size (e.g., A4 or US Legal).


I've determined that Rebuilding the Mailbox does not help.


I've not yet tried the Safe Boot or Create a New Account from Scratch tests. Although I HAVE done the usual maintenance steps of Booting into Safe Mode (without logging in), then a reboot with PRAM reset, then a Disk Utilities > Verify Disk and a Disk Utilities > Repair Permissions. No joy after that, either.


So far, printing messages in Mail 7.1 (Mavericks 10.9.1) is the *ONLY* place I've had problems with printing, although with the print layout features now stripped from the latest iWork apps it's a bit of a chore to separate what's really a problem from what's now simply a "deleted feature" in the latest software.

--Bob

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User profile for user: BobP1776
BobP1776 Author
User level: Level 3
698 points

Dec 31, 2013 9:54 AM in response to BobP1776

I should add that these Print formatting issues do *NOT* show on every Mail 7.1 message in Mavericks 10.9.1.


So far, I've not been able to ferret out just what it is about a Message that cause Print formatting to screw up. Things I believe I've ELIMINATED include:


1) Newly created Messages vs. old Messages.


2) Messages with or without attachements


3) Messages with or without signatures


4) Messages which include prior Messages in a Reply or Forward string, or not (i.e., single, original Messages)


5) Mesages with multiple recipients or not or with CC: recipients in the Header or not.


However this problem is by no means "random". Any Message that shows one of the Three Problems I've detailed above will exhibit that Problem every single time you try to Print it. Any Message which Prints cleanly, will continue to Print cleanly every time as well. So there is SOMETHING about the data in the failing Messages which is triggering this problem.


One new behavior I've noted is that for some Messages a new notice appears on screen -- briefly -- the first time you try to Print them. It appears so briefly that I may have the exact text wrong, but it is something like "Generating Print Content". I'm beginning to suspect the Printing problems show ONLY on Messages that need to go through that "extra step" the first time you try to Print them. But I don't know what that Message implies -- i.e., is there a new, "printable" file being generated by Mail specific to that Message which might persist across different Print attempts? If so, the error may be due to how THAT file is created.


This new notice only seems to appear the FIRST time you try to Print a Message -- and evidently not on every Message (or pehaps it is so brief on some Messages that I just don't see it).

--Bob

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User profile for user: apta
apta
User level: Level 1
68 points

Mar 19, 2014 7:15 PM in response to BobP1776

One of my clients has Mavericks (10.9.2) and reports the same kind of problems printing from Mail. I had a quick (remote) look at her Mail and determined that the problematic messages are those that arrive in Base64 encoding.


To find out the encoding, look at the raw message: go to Mail's menu View->Message->Raw Source. You'll find something like this for Base64 encoding:


------=_Part_9620722_2051738882.1395280117496

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64


Rmlyc3QgbmFtZTogU3RlcGhhbmllICAKCkxhc3QgbmFtZTogVGFsYm90CgpF

...


Is this what Maverick's users are experiencing? My guess is that Mavericks is not decoding this correctly when it goes to print the message.


I won't upgrade to Mavericks until this Mail problem is fixed. In fact I haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade from 10.8 yet.

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User profile for user: miki01003
miki01003
User level: Level 1
0 points

Mar 19, 2014 7:59 PM in response to apta

Apta,


No, I do not see that in the raw source. Instead, I see:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

But let me also add this piece of information/disclaimer. The email issues I noted previously were on my iMac. Now I am viewing those same emails that had issues, but on my MacBook Pro (same email account, still Mavericks 10.9.2 and Apple Mail 7.2--same as on my iMac), and so far the print layout looks normal (i.e., no "header gap"). Which leads me to believe that the Content-Transfer-Encoding line is not the cause of the issue (unless it is dynamic?).

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User profile for user: apta
apta
User level: Level 1
68 points

Mar 19, 2014 8:30 PM in response to miki01003

Miki - some questions:


  • Did you scroll down the raw source to look for additional content encodings?
  • Are you viewing the raw source on the iMac or the MBP?
  • Have you examined the other messages that gave trouble on the iMac?
  • Is your email account using IMAP in both computers?


You mention "dynamic" and there could be a bit of that happening here. I do know that Mail will change the encoding from Base64 to Quoted-printable if I redirect (not forward) a message even though the original and redirected messages should be identical.


Something to try is to redirect a problematic message to yourself and then see if that message also has trouble printing. The more information we have the better we can inform Apple about this issue.


BTW, are people submitting Mail feedback to Apple? Click on the Mail menu and look for "Provide Mail Feedback..."

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User profile for user: apta
apta
User level: Level 1
68 points

Mar 20, 2014 5:56 PM in response to BobP1776

Today I worked on my client's Mavericks Mac and confirmed that the Mail problem has to do with decoding the Base64 content. Printing such a message brings up a window "generating content to print" and in her case the window would remain there for many seconds. On several occassions Mail would just hang there and she had to force quit it. This behavior has gotten a lot worse after she upgraded to 10.9.2 and hence to Mail 7.2 last weekend.


The workaround is to Redirect the message to herself since this converts the Base64 content to quoted-printable encoding. The message then prints out perfectly well.


However, we found yet another bug in Mail 7.2! 😠 Instead of mailing out the redirected message, Mail moves it to the Sent box and changes the date/time stamp on it.


Part of the difficulty in troubleshooting this issue is that not many email messages use Base64 encoding. If other people with this problem try out my workaround and send feedback to Apple, then they might get this fixed.


You can send feedback directly within the Mail app (click Mail->Provide Mail Feedback...) or use this link:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html


The first method is better since you can include your Mac's information.

Come on, Apple, this is UNACCEPTABLE!

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10.9.1: Mail 7.1 screws up Print layout / formatting

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