DEAR SUN SPOTS: In reply to Pete from Gray (March 30) and the difficulties in printing from the Google newspaper archive, there are ways around it. I do a print screen, paste it into my PSP or Paint program, crop what I want. I get the image just as it appears in the paper. Hope this helps. If you would like to email me, I will send you a step-by-step how to. — Jeri, [email protected]

ANSWER: Jeri is right. Sun Spots recruited Mr. Sun Spots, a technology professional, to help with your letter and the one that follows.

The procedure is pretty much as Jeri outlined. You hit print screen (you should see the key at the top of your keyboard; if it’s on the top with a line under it, you will also need to hit the shift key at the same time). Then you open Microsoft Paint and paste it in. You will find you have the whole screen, ads and all, but you can use the functions in Paint to erase them, leaving what you want, and then print.

This sounds pretty simple, but it may take a few tries to get the hang of. It is also very time consuming.

DEAR SUN SPOTS: There is usually a way around the nonprinting option or the “you’ll only be able to view and print this coupon once” factor. For most, just hit print, then at the bottom of the print window, there is a pull-down menu indicating “PDF,” at least there is with my Mac. I have an HP printer. Then, you select “Save as PDF” and save the file to a preferred location. From there, you can print it any number of times, which is really helpful if you lose the first coupon!

Regarding the Google archives, it didn’t work for me with the PDF; got the rest of the page, but not the article. Anyway, if your computer is set up with the “Grab” function (my Mac is, it could be a different name on a PC) you can “grab” the window or the page, etc., save that to the desktop, and print from there. It’s not as easy as the PDF option, but it does work. Probably will have to play around with it to get the best effect.

Try these options and see if they work for you and let me know. — Linda Galway, Turner, [email protected]

ANSWER: Sun Spots doesn’t have access to a Macintosh computer, so she can’t experiment on those aspects. As for printing to a PDF, you need to have certain software on your computer, which many people don’t. Anyway, as you said, the PDF method doesn’t work on the Google archives.

As for the “grab” function, Mr. Sun Spots said there is a “snipping tool” on computers running Windows 7. (He didn’t think there was anything on older version of Windows and, in fact, bought some separate software to allow him to use this function.)

The snipping tool does enable you to grab what’s on the screen, but if the entire article won’t fit on the screen, you’d have to try and grab it in pieces and then “paste” them together in another program that will allow you to compile and manipulate what appears on the screen.

At the Sun Journal, the person who does Looking Back uses this procedure, copying screen grabs of the individual articles into an email to compile each day’s column.

Sun Spots doesn’t know why Google doesn’t enable the print function. It may relate to copyright issues, but she couldn’t find an explanation online.

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