How do I print an email from Mail.app without mail headers?

I would like to be able to print emails without including the default email headers (from, to, title, date) from Apple’s Mail application. It looks like I am not the only one who wants this as the question has been asked numerous times on the Apple Support Communities.

It looks like the answer used to be going into Preferences, then the Viewing tab, and then select ‘None’ for ‘Show message headers’. ^{[1] [2]}

The latest Mail included with Yosemite (version 8.1) does not include the option ‘None’, only ‘Default’ and ‘Custom’. Leaving the custom settings empty will still show the default headers.

How do I hide the mail headers for printing?

Solution 1:

It's a workaround. But when you select the text you want to print. Right click and select under services the option 'New Text Edit window containing text'

This opens the selected text in a new text edit file.. From there you can print.

How to turn it on

If this option is not visible.. you can turn it on at

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services

Scroll to the text section and turn on 'New Text Edit window containing text'

Automator Action

I've made an automations..

selected text -> right click -> services -> print email

Instructions and download are here...

Solution 2:

I had to do it in Safari in my Gmail account (if you're not using Gmail maybe this works elsewhere, maybe not). Select the message you want to print and click the print button. This will open in a new tab/window. Now, right click on the Gmail logo or the header and select "Inspect Element." Here you can open each drop down arrow and mouse over all of the segments. When the Gmail logo and the other header items are highlighted right click and select "Delete Node."

After this, I used CMD+P and then saved as a PDF for printing later, but I'm sure you could just print from here directly since you should have a print preview.

It didn't end up perfect for me because I couldn't eliminate the border lines, but everything else was gone so it was much better.