Formatting an HTML email for printing can provide an interesting challenge in Outlook 2010. HTML nominally formats to fit the width of the display device. There is a significant disparity between the size of a printed page and an open email on a 1280 pixel wide display.

The pictures and text in the screen captures below, from the upcoming release of the ATS-IF file OT4T51CM, are centered on the page. The WordArt position is an absolute position to the right of the column. The print engine will move the text and picture to the center of a new “page” when formatting the page for output. The lower screen capture shows how the finished printout will look with the labels ("Ohio" and "West Virginia") in their correct position.

Many different methods can be employed to constrain the displayed HTML versus the printed output. This example deals with trying to label an image when Align Center for the text and picture has been selected. Other files in the series explore alternative methods for similar issues. For instance, we could have constrained the page into a table with absolute dimensions that would mimic the final page size. This would allow the text/image to still use Left/Right/Center/Justify text tools while placing the WordArt in a drag and drop fashion.

The addition of images, WordArt, Charts, and such create a significant delay in the print preview, which is now a mandatory part of Print. Switching to Print may take several minutes for the first page to be displayed before the Print button becomes available. Advancing to the second page can take just as long.

One “print preview” alternative that we have learned is to use the Quick Print button (which can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar) and print to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer as the default printer. The printout is relatively quick, and the viewer in Windows 7 very fast compared to previous versions. What had taken five minutes to view the first page now has the entire document available in less than thirty seconds. Hopefully print preview will be optimized by the final release.