Printing emails sounds simple enough, until you have hundreds or thousands of emails that need to be converted into paper records. But, opening each email, selecting Print, selecting a printer, and repeating the same process can quickly become a tedious administrative task.
This is especially so where businesses require printed copies of invoices, customer communications, legal correspondence, project discussions, approvals or archived records. Fortunately, there are ways to print bulk emails without opening them one-by-one.
In this guide, we’ll run through your options, the pros and cons of each, and how a dedicated MSG-to-PDF workflow can help you tame large-scale printing.
What is Bulk Email Printing?
Bulk Email Printing is the handling of multiple email messages for printing without opening and printing each message separately.
For example, an organization may have 2,000 MSG files of customer communications. Employees would need to print each file one by one. Rather, a bulk workflow prepares a batch of messages, converts them, and then sends the resulting documents to a printer.
The main goal is to reduce the repetition of actions, while maintaining the core email information, such as:
• Details of sender and recipient • Subject lines for email • Date and Time • E-mail content • CC and BCC information as available • Formatting • Attaching or referring to attachments
Why it’s a Problem to Open Every Email
The classical approach works pretty well for a few messages. Problems with the increasing number of mails.
What if a records department received 1,500 MSG files from a closed project? Just opening, reading, printing and closing each message might take about a minute. Basic printing activity could take about 25 hours.
There are other dangers, too.
Repetitious Work: Employees are wasting time doing the same sets of actions repeatedly instead of doing more important tasks.
Human Mistakes: A message may be skipped, printed twice, saved incorrectly or sent to the wrong printer.
Output Random: Different users may have different print settings such as page size, margins, or layout.
Attachment Problems: Some emails have important attachments. If the attachment is part of the record, printing just the email may not be sufficient.
Manually Print Using Outlook
If the messages are already accessible via Microsoft Outlook, one option is to open each message and print it.
Steps
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Launch Outlook.
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Find the right email address.
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Open the message.
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Choose Print.
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Select the printer or PDF printer.
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Configure page options.
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Begin printing.
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Close the message.
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Do the same for the next e-mail.
Benefits
• You may not need a separate conversion application.
• Outlook users already know it.
• Users can see all messages before printing.
• Good for a small number of e-mails.
Drawbacks
• Extremely slow on large collections.
• Requires manual interaction multiple times.
• More likelihood of missed messages.
• Difficult to keep the output consistent
• Attachment printing may need additional steps.
• Employees need to spend a lot of time monitoring the process.
If you’re sending dozens of emails, it may not be a big deal. For hundreds or thousands, this can be difficult to justify the workload.
Using MSG to PDF Conversion Tool
For larger collections a more structured way of getting from individual MSG files to printable PDF records is to use a dedicated application such as the Softaken MSG to PDF Converter.
The biggest advantage is that the user does not have to open each MSG file and print them manually. Instead, a batch-oriented conversion workflow can be utilised to process multiple messages simultaneously. This is especially useful for MSG files coming from different users, exported from different folders or accumulated over a long period.
Benefits of MSG to PDF Converter
Saves Human Efforts: Batch processing reduces the number of repetitive actions that the user has to do.
Ideal for Large Collections: Dedicated workflow is more suitable when the number of MSG files is hundreds or thousands.
Generates a Standard Output: Convert messages to PDF to keep a consistent format of documents before printing.
Simpler Organization: PDF files can be grouped in folders by projects, customers, dates or departments.
Eases Review: There is no need to open MSG files again and again, users can go through the converted PDF file and then send it to the printer.
Limitations
• Bulk conversion workflow is not fully automatic on the administrative side. Users should check output before printing large numbers of documents. A conversion error on a critical email must be identified before the document goes to the printer.
• Printing itself still consumes paper, ink and printer resources. Organisations need to assess whether every converted email really needs to be printed.
• Attachments may need separate consideration depending on the organization's record-retention requirements and the capabilities of the conversion application selected.
Best Practices
For making the process more reliable, do the following:
• Save the original MSG files as backup.
• Create logical folders for messages prior to conversion.
• Use meaningful file names for PDFs where possible.
• Test with a small group before the whole collection.
• After conversion, review representative PDFs.
• Look at important attachments separately.
• Keep the same printer settings.
• Do not print out unnecessary emails.
• Keep a record of messages that have been handled.
• Save the converted PDFs in a secure location after printing.
Who Needs Bulk Email Printing?
Bulk email printing can be good for:
• Legal departments
• Offices of government
• Financial institutions
• Customer care teams
• Project management units (PMUs)
• Teams of administrators
• Compliance functions
• Physical Record Keeping Businesses
• Organisations that are managing historical email archives
This comes in especially handy when the email record needs to be converted into a standard format prior to being physically filed.
FAQs
1. Is there a way to print multiple MSG files without opening each one?
Yes. Batch conversion workflow allows to convert multiple MSG files into PDFs first and then review and print the resulting documents together.
2. Need Outlook for bulk MSG to PDF conversion?
It relies on the conversion application. Some dedicated MSG to PDF applications can process MSG files without having Outlook installed.
3. Is it better to print MSG files directly or convert them to PDF?
PDF is a standard document format that allows for review, organization, storage and printing to be consistent across systems.
4. Do I have to convert all the MSG files together?
If you process files in logical batches, it will make verification and troubleshooting easier for large archives.
5. What to check after bulk conversion?
Check message content, sender, recipient, subject, dates, formatting, and any required attachments. A sample quality check before large-scale printing can be useful.
6. Is there no need for manual checking with bulk printing?
No. It reduces duplicate printing, but important records still need to be reviewed before final printing and archiving.
Conclusion
You might think that it’s fine to open and print them one at a time, but as the emails add up, this method can quickly become tedious. Bulk printing isn’t about sending hundreds of documents to a printer all at once. It’s about setting up a reliable workflow that means those documents are ready efficiently. For MSG files, as an intermediate step, you might want to convert the messages to PDF prior to printing them. It generates standard documents that can be viewed, sorted and printed in batches. It depends upon the number of emails, the importance of the records, attachment needs and whether physical copies are really needed. For small collections you can get away with printing it yourself. The larger the archive, the more you’ll want to convert in batches and then print in a structured way, which can eliminate a lot of repetitive work and make the whole process much easier to manage.