When you need to print an email — directions to a friend’s house, for instance, or that recipe for pistachio salsa — click the print icon along the message’s top, press Ctrl+P, or choose File -> Print. In any case, the familiar Print dialog box appears to let you select a printer, paper type, number of pages, and so on. Choose your options, and Outlook Express whisks it off to your printer.

Things become a bit tricker when printing an email that was composed using the HTML format. HTML messages can contain extra formatting like images, unusual margin widths, tables, and other items difficult to fit onto paper. So, Windows XP treats the mail as if it were a Web page, offering the same options as Internet Explorer for squeezing the mail onto a single sheet of paper.