Q. My mother has macular degeneration and I like to show her e-mails from family to read. I use Microsoft Outlook as my e-mail program, and I can’t figure out a way to increase the size of the font on an e-mail that I have received.

Do you know a way around this problem (other than asking the senders to increase the font before sending)?

John Russell charter.net

A. There are ways to enlarge e-mail text both onscreen and as printouts, Mr. R.

First, on the screen because it seems more efficient. There is a tool called the Magnifier that is built into Windows XP for exactly these problems. When you activate this feature, a box appears at the top of the screen with stark, large black letters on a white background. The display shows the text wherever the mouse is located, and it is very easy to just move the mouse slowly down the page while reading the e-mail text in the magnification area.

Click on Start and then Programs and then Accessibility. There you will find the Magnifier icon. Click it and you can set it to enlarge letters by several factors. You can also set it to magnify whatever is being typed in the keyboard to let her answer those notes that she can read in the magnifier window.

You can get Outlook to send a version of e-mail messages to the printer with larger type by using the View/Text Size commands. Click View, and in Text size choose Largest. When you print a message set to Largest, the type is much larger but still probably not optimal for folks with serious vision issues.

Q. I am running a Gateway 2000 with Windows 98 and am using a 700 series Hewlett-Packard printer. I am having trouble with printing full lines of text.

The full-line text appears on the display monitor, but the printed pages drop the last three or four letters of each line on the right. In my genealogy listings, for example, the last three characters are dropping off a long list of names.

Is there a way to fix this?

Peter D. Gold, Rainbow City, Ala.

A. This problem is all too common, and the age of the equipment has nothing to do with it, Mr. G.

You probably can fix the problem by calling up either the Page Setup tool under the File tool in your genealogy software, or by tinkering with the software that HP supplies with its printers.

These printers generally have a default setting of 1 inch for the right-hand-side margin, where your system is losing characters. Reducing the margin will allow more characters on each line and fix your problem. Click on Page Setup and look for the tab for Margins. Change your setting to .5 inches and fire it up again. That should do it.

Another way to finesse this kind of problem is to change the font size for your text to a slightly smaller setting, say from 14 points to 13 points or 12 points.

I think it’s a particularly good idea with genealogy records like pedigree charts to use the wider landscape setting on the printer rather than the default portrait. The portrait mode prints on an 81/2-by-11-inch sheet, with the shorter side at the bottom. Landscape uses the 11-inch side for the bottom and permits much longer lines.

So, start with cutting down those margins, then consider dropping a point or two from the fonts, and leave the shift to landscape mode as an ace in the hole.

Jim Coates writes for the Chicago Tribune.

under Page Setup and under the drivers for your own printer, which can be accessed by picking Properties after ordering the computer to print a test sheet.

(Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoatestribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim.)

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AP-NY-04-28-04 1020EDT