Are there occasions when you’d like to print just part of an email message or web page? Here’s a technique you can use to print selected text from just about any application on your Mac. I’ll use an email message in Apple’s Mail application as an example.

• Open Mail and select a bit of text in an email message.
• Go to the Mail menu and select Services. From the sub-menu select Make New Sticky Note. (If you’re using an application other than Mail you won’t have a Mail menu. Instead, go to the menu named after your application. For example, if you’re using Firefox, select the text and go to the Firefox menu.)
• The application named Stickies will open and you’ll see a new sticky note on your screen that contains the text you selected in your email message.
• Go to the File menu and select Print.
• Click the Print button to print that sticky note.

That’s it! (You can delete the sticky note by clicking the small square in its upper left corner.)

You can use this same technique in Safari, Firefox, Word 2011 and most other Mac OS X applications. This technique will not work in some older Mac applications such as Word 2004 and Quicken 2005.

Here are instructions on how to remove and re-add a print queue. I commonly do this to fix printer issues. Somehow the old queue gets “damaged” and stops working properly. As long as you don’t mind losing any of the print jobs which may be sitting in the queue, go ahead and do the following:

1. Go to Apple menu, select System Preferences, click on Print & Fax.
2. On the left-hand list of print queues, click once on the print queue you’d like to delete. For this example, let’s assume the queue is named Brother HL-5250. Click the minus sign icon below this list to permanently delete this print queue.
3. Click the plus sign icon (next to the minus sign) to begin adding a new print queue.
4. A window will appear listing all printers directly connected to your Mac or available via your network. You should see the Brother HL-5250 printer listed. In order to appear, the printer would need to be turned on and directly connected to your Mac using a USB cable or connected to your network using an ethernet cable. (If you don’t see the printer then you’ll first have to figure out why it’s not showing up.)
5. Click once on the Brother HL-5250 printer to select it. Wait a few seconds while a conversation occurs between your Mac and the Brother printer. Once the conversation is complete, then the printer driver will be selected and listed at the bottom of this window. Once the “Add” button becomes active, click it.
6. You’ll be taken back to the printer list in Print & Fax. You should see the Brother HL-5250 on this list now. Close this window by clicking the red dot.
7. Send a print job to the Brother printer to test it.

Have you ever wanted to print just part of a web page or some other document? If so, you should consider installing the free Print Selection Service.

Using Print Selection is easy. One just needs to select text in any document such as a web page, a word processing document or a PDF file. Then go to the application menu, select Services and select Print Selection. A preview window will appear. Simply click the Print button. The only tricky thing is being able to find the application menu. The application menu is the menu named after the application you are using. For example, if you’re using Safari, then its application menu is the menu named Safari. If you’re using Pages, then the application menu is named Pages.

Print Selection requires Mac OS X 10.4 or newer. It also requires that the Mac application supports the use of Services. While most applications do support Services, not all developers take the time to build this into their product. The most notable example of this is Microsoft. Neither Office 2004 nor Office 2008 applications support Services.