TLC Tips of the Week:                          from Helen Olberg

This week’s tip applies to printing pages or parts of pages from the internet.

 

Finally you’ve located the information you want on the internet. Now you’d like to print it. 

When you click the print button, any of several things can happen:

  1. You get an extra sheet or several extra sheets.
  2. The whole right side of the screen information is missing.
  3. You get all the advertising on the screen as well.

 

How can you get just the part that you want?

 

Unfortunately, there is not one single technique for this. Each web page has been set up by a person who has his own way of constructing web pages. Generally speaking, the web page is made up of a combination of text and graphics, and then stored as an HTML file of something similar. Here are some of the techniques that I use.

 

·        DON’T just click the Print button. When you click the Print button, you will print the web page (by default) from top to bottom, possibly lopping off the right side, regardless of how many sheets of paper it takes.

·        Look for a button on the web page that indicates ‘Printable Version’. Clicking it will take you to a different web page that has been constructed for printing on an 8 ½ X 11 sheet of paper. (You may still get an extra sheet when you click the Print button, but it won’t lop off the right side.)

·        ‘Print Preview’, if you can. Check to see if your version of Internet Explorer has the ‘Print Preview’ ability. In the menu click File, Print Preview. (Here you can see the total number of pages and if the right side has been truncated.) The Print Preview’s Print button will open the Print dialog box. Here you can tell if the last page(s) are what you want.

·        Whether or not you have the Print Preview, if you don’t want all the pages, click File Print, to open the Print dialog box. Here you can specify which printer, which pages, or selection. Click the Print button in the dialog box when you’ve set what you want. (Unfortunately, this window doesn’t show how many pages long this will be.)

 

How can you ‘select’ or highlight just the part that you want?

For text:

Move your mouse across the web page until you see the I-bar mouse pointer. Click using the I-bar at the beginning of the area you want to capture and drag to the end of the area you want.  (Bad luck – using the Shift key will NOT work!) After you’ve selected the text you want, click File, Print and click the ‘Selection’ option under Page Range.  (Hint: you can also copy and paste this into a Word document.)

 

For graphics:

The graphic pictures are a little harder to get. You will need to copy and paste them into another program, then print from that program. To capture a picture, point to the picture with your mouse, right-click, and select ‘Copy’. Switch to the other program (Word, Paint, etc.) and ‘Paste’ the picture where you want it.

Occasionally you won’t be able to copy the picture, due to copyright violations.

 

Back to the TLC Tips page