This demonstration will show you how to convert an email message by printing it to PDF.
To begin open the email you want to convert.
If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed, find the Adobe PDF tab at the top of the message and click it.
Next click the Convert to Adobe PDF button.
Navigate to where you want the file to be stored. Ideally in a shared storage space in the relevant folder.
By default The PDF uses the subject line from the email as the file name. This is often inadequate and
you should seek to create a relevant name for the document that includes the date and the name of the
sender so in the future you will not need to open the PDF to learn this information.
After saving the file the PDF will automatically open where you can see it contains the From, To, Subject,
Date, and body of the email.
Close the PDF after confirming it contains all the information that you want to preserve. The final step is
to delete the original email from your inbox; but before we do that, what do you do if you don’t have
Adobe Acrobat Pro installed?
Luckily, there is another solution.
As before, open up the message you want to preserve. The Adobe PDF tab will not be visible if Acrobat
Pro is not installed therefore you will click the File tab at the top left and select Print.
Next you will want to select Microsoft Print to PDF from the Printer drop down menu. Click the Print
button above and select where to save the file. In this instance we have opened up the appropriate
shared folder.
Microsoft Print to PDF leaves the file name blank requiring you to fill in all the necessary information of
date sent, senders name, and the subject line as well as any other relevant information.
After clicking Save the windows will close leaving you back at the original message. Close the message,
but before you delete the message from your inbox navigate to your shared folder.
As you can see the Adobe Acrobat PDF is here but the Microsoft Print to PDF file is missing.
Depending how your shared space is configured it may not be possible to save your converted file
directly to the shared directory.
Fortunately a simple work around exists if you find you cannot save directly to your shared drive.
Open the message and again click the file tab followed by the print option ensuring that the Microsoft
Print to PDF option is selected in the drop down menu, then click print.
This time save the file on your local hard drive. Here I have chosen the desktop to temporarily save the
file. Again you will need to give the file a name, then click save.
If you navigate to where you saved the file you can copy it to the shared drive and delete the local copy,
followed by deleting the original message from your in box.
Though before we delete the original message we will review how to complete this process using the
Office 365 Outlook interface in a web browser.
You again open the message you want to preserve and look for the three dots which is the More Actions
tab. Select Print. A print window will appear and from the top drop down menu select the Microsoft
Print to PDF option and click OK.
You will then need to select where you want to temporarily save the file and give it a relevant name. In
this example we have again saved the file to the desktop.
After clicking Save you can close the print window and then delete the original message. Minimizing the
browser we can see the file on the desktop and again we copy it to the shared drive and delete the local
copy. The last step is to empty the recycle bin to finally delete the copies on the computer.