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 I’ve actually had this happen before, and the fix was really easy. It’s possible that the default printer in your email program isn’t set correctly. If this happens, it will look like it’s printing, but nothing comes out of your printer. Rather than just clicking on the printer icon on the toolbar, go into File then Print. See what printer is listed as the default. If it isn’t correct, choose the right printer and then click on Print. If this doesn’t solve your problem, try these options:

• If you can’t print from the Print option, try printing from the Print Preview option on the File tab. If you don’t see Print Preview, click on the small arrows at the bottom and the tab will expand to show this option. Sometimes you won’t be able to print from HTML, so change the email to Rich Text and see if you can print from this tab.
• If your computer printed emails at one time, but doesn’t anymore, you might want to try a system restore. This will bring your computer back to an earlier time when things were working right - it is basically a ‘snapshot’ of your computer as it was at that time. Make sure that you have all of your data backed up before you try to restore your computer as you will lose anything that has been added to your computer after the restore date. Go to Start, then Program, then Accessories. Click on System Tools and System Restore.
• Is the computer printing only the headers but not the body of the email? This can happen in Outlook, and you just need to adjust your settings. In Outlook, go to Tools and click on Options. Go to Preferences, then Email Options. Uncheck the box marked Read All Standard Mail in Plain Text. Click OK. While still in Tools, go to Options again, then Mail Format. Check Use MS Office Word To Read Rich Text Email Messages. Click OK. This should solve the problem.
• Another, more drastic, solution is to uninstall and reinstall your email program. Go to Start then Control Pane. Click on Add/Remove Programs, then Add/Remove Windows Components. Find the email program from the list and click Change/Remove at the top right of the panel. You will then need to reinstall your email program.

If you are trying to print but getting a specific error message, you will need to post that message in order to determine the problem. Hopefully, one of these easier fixes will work for you.

Outlook Express has a feature for exporting contacts in the address book, which is easy enough to use, but it does not break down the contact list into specific groups. So, we’re going to need to get creative. First, let me show you how to export the list in case you don’t already know how to do so. Then, I’ll suggest what you can do about the mail group.

Go into Outlook Express and click the File menu. Now, click Export and choose Address Book. Choose Text File (comma separated values) followed by Export. From there, you will click Browse and save the file to an easy to find location on your hard drive such as My Documents with a relevant name. Later, you should copy this file to CD or an online storage location for safekeeping.

Should you ever need to restore the data, you’d go to File, Import, and follow the steps for importing this file back into Outlook Express.

Okay, that’s easy for general purposes but doesn’t solve your problem with the mail group. What we need to do is indicate that these individuals belong to this group. It will be tedious but worthwhile. Go ahead and create an export list as described above so that you can see how the fields layout and open the file in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel. Notice that there are dozens of fields, many of which are unused? We can use one of these fields to mark each member as a mail group member. Too bad Outlook Express doesn’t have a field for this. Pick an unused field or adopt the Notes field and place an entry such as “Mail Group 1 Member” into each contact’s field.

Should you ever need to restore the data, you can use Excel to filter the list and import your marked contacts first, create a new group, include each freshly imported contact marked into that group, and then later import the non-group members into the address book.

I realize that you likely have hundreds of people in your list. In this case, you may want to export the address book into Excel, mark the fields in the database, save the file as a CSV file, and re-import it into Outlook Express. If you do this, make sure that you know how to work with Excel. Import the file and tell Excel that the fields are separated by commas so that each field has its own cell. You can then quickly mark the contacts by copying and pasting. You may need to look at the group from within Outlook Express to identify which people belong to the group.

Make sure to save it as a CSV file once again. When importing into Outlook Express, you will have the option of overwriting existing contacts with the new data. If you’re comfortable with the changes you made, overwrite the existing contacts. If you don’t overwrite the existing contacts, you will have duplicate contacts.

Regardless of whether you use this idea or not, it’s not a bad idea to export the list and save it offsite somewhere so that you have something should the computer ever crash.

Just last week, I had the same exact problem with Windows Live Mail. I noticed that it was unusually quiet, with no emails coming in at all which is unusual for me. As I belong to several Web sites that send me e-mail notifications, I knew by logging in to these sites that I theoretically should have received e-mail messages. All morning, I was able to send emails okay - or so I thought. They went through but my recipients did not receive them.

Now, whether your problem is related or not, I can’t say. However, you can do a few things to troubleshoot this issue. First, if you use an e-mail client on your computer such as Outlook Express and your e-mail is also available for viewing via a Web-based e-mail account, check to see if a large file is stuck in your inbox. This happens to me periodically where someone will send a file that is either so large it won’t download, thus blocking everything behind it, or it is corrupt. If you see a large file sitting in your inbox when logged in via the web interface and it is dated on or around the time you started having problems receiving emails, then it is probably the culprit. Delete the file and watch as all the other emails behind it now come through.

If you don’t have access to the e-mail account as described above, call your ISP and ask them to check to see if any incoming emails are stuck and blocking all incoming messages.

The next thing you should do is clean out your folders in your e-mail client. This is what solved my woes the other day. If the folders (such as your Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, etc.) are maxed out, you’ll experience problems of this nature. I believe that 2000 messages are about the limit. Either delete, delete, delete or create new folders where you can store groups of messages that you need to keep. Be sure to empty the Deleted items and Junk mail folders. Once you’ve cleaned up the folders and reduced their contents, use the e-mail client’s “compact” function. For example, this setting is usually found in the Tools > Options menu. In Windows Live Mail, go to Tools> Options > Advanced> Maintenance. Check the mark next to Compact Database and set it to 1 for now (go back later and change it to a higher setting). Close Windows Live Mail and it will then compact the database. This cleans up the structure and reorganizes files so that the application can run more efficiently.

Now, check to see if you can receive emails.

If these tips don’t work, double check your e-mail settings including the incoming server setting. In Windows Live Mail > Accounts > Mail > Properties > Connection to make sure that the settings haven’t disappeared. Settings for other clients follow similar patterns.

Finally, you may need to contact your ISP for the correct incoming server settings.