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Frisco

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 24, 2002
2,475
69
Utopia
From the screenshots that I have seen it looks like Leopard still doesn't offer a 'Print Selection' option.

Does anyone else find this ridiculous?
 
Please tell me this isn't true? It's such a problem for me both in email and browsers.

Can anyone confirm this?
 
I have not seen any screenshots relating to print dialogue boxes. Link please?
 
From the screenshots that I have seen it looks like Leopard still doesn't offer a 'Print Selection' option.

Does anyone else find this ridiculous?

Not particularly; attempting to format and print an arbitrary selection is quite difficult. I'm also left wondering what you mean by "Leopard doesn't offer" when this would be an application-specific feature.

If you are just trying to do this with text, use the Application/Services/TextEdit/New Window Containing Selection menu entry. It's a little convoluted, but gives you the opportunity to tweak what you're printing before you commit to it.

= Mike
 
Ok I appologise if this isn't what your on about and I am not a Mac expert and im not on me mac so excuse the sketchy description.

But if you have Firefox on your mac you can certainly do a print selection. Basically when you print and the print window comes up and it says Style, I have a setting called Firefox Selection or something. This will allow me to print whatever I have selected. Now I havn't tried this from word, but it definetly works in Firefox. When I get home I will see if it works in word, if there are any other programs you would like to see if it works on let me know.

Hope that made sense.
 
If you're in a website, etc. and want to print something off it, currently one can't simply highlight what they want to print, go to print select/selection as in windows. It doesn't exist. Same with Mail.

So say you get a 5 page document in mail and want to print just a paragraph of it for your records/whatever. You can't! You have to print ALL 5 pages.
With webpages, say there's a map you need to print off quick. You can't just highlight the map and 'print selection' - you are stuck printing the map and the whole document it's attached to.

Windows has offered it since I remember. Apple not having this is a big problem. That one thing made me almost return my first Mac. Indeed, I would have never bought it if I had known.
 
If you're in a website, etc. and want to print something off it, currently one can't simply highlight what they want to print, go to print select/selection as in windows. It doesn't exist. Same with Mail.

So say you get a 5 page document in mail and want to print just a paragraph of it for your records/whatever. You can't! You have to print ALL 5 pages.
With webpages, say there's a map you need to print off quick. You can't just highlight the map and 'print selection' - you are stuck printing the map and the whole document it's attached to.

Windows has offered it since I remember. Apple not having this is a big problem. That one thing made me almost return my first Mac. Indeed, I would have never bought it if I had known.

Ok as I said i'm not positive if it would work in word or mail etc but I amm 99% sure I have printed a selection off of a website. But I belive its becuase I have Firefox. When I first started using Tiger just over a year ago not having a print selection option drove me nuts. Until someone pointed out, or I found the Firefox selection thing.

Anyway when I get home I will have a good look and see if this selection thing works on other programs.
 
I'm in Firefox now and there's no option under 'file' 'print'.

There IS a way to dump to textedit or other various hoops but it's really not acceptable. Cumbersome.
Like - I do Ebay right? I get all these notices when I list, sell, etc. and they're quite lengthy. I need a hard copy of these things but just need maybe one paragraph out of the whole 2 page email. Unless a script is written and one is in plain text - only then can one do this.

It should be a standard. Anyone know if Leopard has this or not?
 
I switched almost four years ago now and this still drives me nuts. In Windows just about every program I ever used (with the exception of one really old developer abandoned accounting program) offered this feature. I can't believe Safari and Mail can't do it. I've submitted requests to Apple a bunch of times (apple.com/macosx/feedback/) about getting this feature included but I guess it didn't help.

If Firefox on Mac and Word and Excel on Mac can offer this feature I don't see why Apple's own programs can't. Ideally I'd like to see the feature implemented in such a way that highlighting what you want to print and then clicking print automatically prints only the selection. This would cut out the step of having to choose to print the selection which I often forgot to do when I intended to.
 
...So say you get a 5 page document in mail and want to print just a paragraph of it for your records/whatever. You can't! You have to print ALL 5 pages.

Er, no you don't. You can select which pages to print. So at the most, you would end up with some information on one page that you didn't actually want.
 
From the screenshots that I have seen it looks like Leopard still doesn't offer a 'Print Selection' option.... Does anyone else find this ridiculous?

Yes, this is rediculous! This is an example of how Windows has more "intelegence" than Mac OS X. Sometimes it seems Apple limits such features/functionality just for the sake of simplicity. I wish they would include all these things... and the poeple who want them will have them and the people who don't don't ever have to know they're there. Come on, Apple! Grow UP!
 
MacVault - Please note that the OP's post was from October 2006. Just based on a scant number of screenshots. So perhaps it does have this needed feature and we don't know it.

I want to hear from those who have Leopard before I get upset.

Yes, I can tell it to print one page, but that page might be loaded with pics, zillions of words of text, etc. that one doesn't want/need. It's just inefficient and wasteful. Not only will I recycle paper by flipping over printed in my printer, I'll reverse it to reprint on the same page. And yes, I like to save on ink by not printing pics, etc. that I don't need. It's just a standard thing windows has done since back in the day and I feel should be a no-brainer in year 2007 for Mac. :)
 
Ok I can definetly print from Firefox but thats it, can't do it from word etc.

Let me know if you want to know how to selection print from Firefox.
 
Download the free program "print selection 1.0." This problem bothered me a lot, but this program will add a "print selection" option to your services menu. Hope this helps.
 
Yes please! I assumed it would be under 'file' 'print'.

Sure np. All i do is when in Firefox go to file and print. On the print window that appears I go to Presets and change this to Firefox. This should then enable some options below this, one of which is print selection only.

Pitty this option isn't available for any other programs :( but will give that Print Selection 1.0 a go.
 
So say you get a 5 page document in mail and want to print just a paragraph of it for your records/whatever. You can't! You have to print ALL 5 pages.
With webpages, say there's a map you need to print off quick. You can't just highlight the map and 'print selection' - you are stuck printing the map and the whole document it's attached to.
Incredible, all those years of working with Windows I've never noticed that I could do "print selection". Cool... Thanks...

BTW, it works for Firefox on Windows, Wordpad and Excel, but not for Acrobat or Outlook. Is this a Windows feature or something implemented by each app?
 
There was a 3rd party add-on to Panther and Tiger that enabled a service Print Selection. I even had it installed at one point but now I do not have it anymore and I can't remember the name.

EDIT: Print Selection - 1.0
 
BTW, it works for Firefox on Windows, Wordpad and Excel, but not for Acrobat or Outlook. Is this a Windows feature or something implemented by each app?

It's necessarily application-specific, as the app has to work out how to re-layout the selection in order to get something that can be printed.

The Services menu addon is an interesting thing; I'm guessing that it depends on the app with the selection pushing it to the Pasteboard in a format that Print Selection can lay out and print, which is a neat hack.

= Mike
 
I see under 'services' for Safari, the print selection 1.0 I just downloaded, but not under FireFox. It seems it doesn't work for Firefox?

AFKMatrix - I don't have that menu option either under Firefox.

I like Safari but it doesn't seem to have that "restore" function that Firefox has where you can force quit and later 'restore' all your tabs, etc. Wish Safari had that.
 
I see under 'services' for Safari, the print selection 1.0 I just downloaded, but not under FireFox. It seems it doesn't work for Firefox?

AFKMatrix - I don't have that menu option either under Firefox.

I like Safari but it doesn't seem to have that "restore" function that Firefox has where you can force quit and later 'restore' all your tabs, etc. Wish Safari had that.



In Firefox (Camino too) to Print Selection:
File>Print...>Under the 'Copies and Pages' pull down menu, select Firefox (if you're on Camino, it will be called Camino)>Check off "Print Selection Only"
 
BTW, it works for Firefox on Windows, Wordpad and Excel, but not for Acrobat or Outlook. Is this a Windows feature or something implemented by each app?

It seems that in Windows there is a default print dialog, that most of the apps use and that enables you to just print selections. Some apps use their own dialog. Funny: Windows Mail (on Vista) has this feature and the newest Outlook has it not.
 
Steve - I don't see where that is on my iMac OS X 10.4.9. What are you running that you see this?
 
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