BobP1776
Level 3 (695 points)

Q: 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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BobP1776

Q: 10.9.1: Mail 7.1 screws up Print layout / formatting

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  • by miki01003,

    miki01003 miki01003 Mar 21, 2014 6:33 AM in response to apta
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 6:33 AM in response to apta

    I can believe that the decoding thing may very well be a major culprit -- especially if it relates to/results from a clash among 7.1, 7.2, and earlier Mail versions (i.e., sender/recipient using different versions of Mail).  However, here is more data:  one of my problematic messages (i.e., header gap) had not a single Base64 in the raw source. BUT it was also the only mail message among my problem sample that contained, instead:

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

    and

    X-RT-Original-Encoding: utf-8

    and

    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

  • by apta,

    apta apta Mar 21, 2014 9:10 PM in response to miki01003
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 9:10 PM in response to miki01003

    miki,

     

    The UTF-8 refers to an extension of the original 7-bit ASCII characters to 8-bits.  The Mail client needs to decipher the bytes and that may very well be a problem that Mail 7 has.  The Base64 messages I examined that cause problems do use UTF-8.

     

    I'm no expert on this stuff but I want to gather data from people on this forum to find out what commonality the problematic messages have.

     

    To be clear about your experience, are all your problematic messages Base64 except for the one with UTF-8?

     

    I'm eager to hear from others as to what kind of messages cause them printing problems.  BTW the Base64 messages were not from a Mac but from a commercial service (HubSpot) that uses amazonaws.com.

  • by Rene H,

    Rene H Rene H Mar 26, 2014 8:24 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2014 8:24 AM in response to BobP1776

    Exactly the same here! Different Clients 10.9.1 and 10.9.2

  • by apta,

    apta apta Mar 26, 2014 3:51 PM in response to Rene H
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Mar 26, 2014 3:51 PM in response to Rene H

    Rene,

     

    Can you take a look at the raw source of the problematic messages? 

    Go to Mail's menu View->Message->Raw Source (shortcut is Cmd-Opt-U)

     

    In the Content-Type entries what do you see for encoding?

  • by Rene H,

    Rene H Rene H Mar 27, 2014 12:43 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 27, 2014 12:43 AM in response to BobP1776

    Hi apta,

     

    it seems there is:

     

    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

     

    in the problematic Mails.

     

    In other ones there is written:

     

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

  • by apta,

    apta apta Mar 27, 2014 3:57 PM in response to Rene H
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Mar 27, 2014 3:57 PM in response to Rene H

    Rene,

     

    Do you see something like this:

    Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

     

    or similar?

  • by Rene H,

    Rene H Rene H Mar 28, 2014 12:50 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 28, 2014 12:50 AM in response to BobP1776

    No, there is written

     

    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

     

    nothing with base64

  • by bryanthebear,

    bryanthebear bryanthebear Apr 2, 2014 2:19 PM in response to Rene H
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 2, 2014 2:19 PM in response to Rene H

    To everyone in this discussion, I have the exact same general header gap printing problem with some emails and profoundly appreciate all the investigating you are doing.  Since I am not very technical, I wonder how I (and all users) will learn once the solution has been found and, if possible, corrected?

  • by apta,

    apta apta May 11, 2014 5:38 PM in response to bryanthebear
    Level 1 (55 points)
    May 11, 2014 5:38 PM in response to bryanthebear

    One workaround to the first issue (gap after the header and before the first line of the message) that seems to work for all messages is to create a custom paper size with a longer height.  Instead of US Letter (8.5x11") I created an 8.5x12" size and added an extra 1" to the bottom margin to compensate the extra length.

  • by kevinlb,

    kevinlb kevinlb May 20, 2014 12:37 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 20, 2014 12:37 AM in response to BobP1776

    Solved (for me, at least!)

     

    The problem:

    Message appears fine in Mail.

    Choosing Print shows preview with header on one page and rest of message starting on a new page.

     

    The solution:

    Mail Preferences > Fonts & Colors

    Message font was Tahoma 13. Changed to Tahoma 12. (I tried a couple of different fonts and they made no difference - it was the size).

     

    Very annoying!

     

    Cheers,

    Kevin

  • by Daniel Sroka,

    Daniel Sroka Daniel Sroka Jun 9, 2014 12:07 PM in response to kevinlb
    Level 1 (135 points)
    Jun 9, 2014 12:07 PM in response to kevinlb

    Solution confirmed on my end: by changing the font and/or used by the message, the email would print without the page gap after the header.

  • by melastudio,

    melastudio melastudio Sep 10, 2014 4:23 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 10, 2014 4:23 AM in response to BobP1776

    The font Tahoma 12 works in most cases but not all... And a font so small for me could be a problem... (the fonts change applies both to incoming messages and to the new ones)

    My workaround is to create a custom page size and set that as default in the Printers & Scanners pref pane...

    But in order to do so I've found an option on my printer that override the warning for the wrong page size. If you don't have that option could be annoying to skip this warning every time...

     

    It's not a solution but it lets me go forward....

  • by msssssss,

    msssssss msssssss Sep 20, 2014 8:10 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2014 8:10 AM in response to BobP1776

    This happens for me often (circumstances seem random), with Mail 7.3 on macbook air with OS 10.9.5.

     

    Tried changing the font in preferences (as suggested), but that did not fix the problem.

  • by Robert Clare1,

    Robert Clare1 Robert Clare1 Aug 27, 2015 1:45 AM in response to BobP1776
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 27, 2015 1:45 AM in response to BobP1776

    Hi, I'm having the same issue (lines split across a page) using Mail 8.2 on Yosemite 10.10.5, so it definitely has NOT been fixed in the latest, greatest.  Here is an example of a line split across two pages (screenshot of PDF preview).  This was using Monaco 13 pt.  Changing font size just moves around which lines might get split.  It seems like Mail is just making one big image and then someone else is coming along and splitting the image arbitrarily into pages.  This also happens with attachments, where, eg, a photo will get split across pages. 

     

    I find it very hard to believe that this kind of bug (or should I call it a "feature") still exists after so many years.

     

    The content type for this mail message was

    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

     

    Cheers,

     

    Bob

     

    BadMailPrint.jpg

  • by John D. Berry,

    John D. Berry John D. Berry Oct 2, 2015 11:57 PM in response to Robert Clare1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 11:57 PM in response to Robert Clare1

    All three of the problems mentioned in this thread are ones that I encounter now in Yosemite 10.10.5, and they're very frustrating. Mostly it's #2, the blank pages at the end of an email message, but the other two problems occur sporadically, too. This is poor performance for Apple Mail. And weirdly inexplicable. I have no useful information to contribute to those who've tried to figure out the problem, but I sure hope it gets fixed.

     

    These are bugs. They need fixing.

     

    John

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