E-mail is a great tool for a lot of reasons. One main reason is that it can cut down on paper waste, plus it’s fast and easy.

But sometimes you do need a hard copy of an e-mail message, your calendar, or your contacts list. That’s why Outlook comes with printing options.

In any screen in Outlook, you can use one of these methods to print:

-       Press Ctrl and P.

-       Click on the File menu and click Print.

-       Click the Print icon () on the standard toolbar. (If you use this option, you won’t see the print dialog shown below.)

The standard Windows print dialog will appear when you perform any of the commands above; you can see an example in the figure below.

This box may be a little different depending on which item you’re in or what printer you’re using, but the layout of this window will always stay the same.

At the top of the window in the Printer section (marked with a 1 in the picture above), you can choose which printer you want to use. You can click the properties button to modify paper, colour, and quality settings for your printer. We’re not going to cover these options because they’re different for every printer.

Next, in the Print Style box (marked with a 2 in the sample picture), you can pick how you want your data printed out. These options are different for each type of item (calendar, contacts, etc), so we’re going to go over them separately in a moment.

With the print range box (marked with a 3), you can choose to print all items or only selected items. And with the Copies section, you can choose the number of pages and the number of copies to print.

Last but not least, you can use the buttons at the bottom to finalize your print job. Click OK to print, cancel to leave this window and discard your settings, or preview to see how your document will look.

Let’s take a closer look at print preview as it’s a pretty useful tool.