Office 365 Email Printing: The Complete Guide

You pay for Microsoft 365. Your company pays $12.50 per user per month for Business Standard. Maybe $22 for Premium.

And you can't auto-print emails.

You'd think a $500 billion company could add a "print this email when it arrives" button. But here we are in 2026, manually opening emails and hitting Ctrl+P like it's 2004.

Let's go through every option you have for printing emails from Office 365 -- the native ones, the workarounds, and the one that actually works.

Table of Contents

• Native Printing Options in Office 365
  • Outlook on the Web (OWA)
  • Classic Outlook (Desktop)
  • New Outlook (Desktop)
• The Outlook Rules Approach
• COM Add-ins: The Legacy Approach
• Power Automate: The Almost-Solution
• VBA Macros: The IT Department Nightmare
• The Standalone Solution: AutoPrintEmail
• What Makes It Different from Everything Else
• How It Works with Office 365
  • Step 1: Connect Your Account
  • Step 2: Create a Filter
  • Step 3: Choose Your Printer
  • Step 4: Let It Run
• Shared Mailboxes and Distribution Groups
• Security and Compliance
• Migrating from Classic Outlook Print Rules
• TL;DR

Native Printing Options in Office 365

Microsoft gives you a few ways to print emails. All of them require you to be sitting at your desk, clicking things.

Outlook on the Web (OWA)

Open email. Click the three dots. Click Print. Wait for the print dialog. Click Print again. Repeat 47 times.

• No batch printing
• No auto-printing
• No attachment printing (prints email body only)
• Can't select multiple emails to print at once

Classic Outlook (Desktop)

The desktop version is better. You can:

• Select multiple emails and batch print (Ctrl+P)
• Use Print Preview
• Print attachments individually
• Set up rules (with limitations)

But Classic Outlook is on borrowed time. Microsoft is pushing everyone to the New Outlook, and they've removed batch printing entirely.

New Outlook (Desktop)

The replacement for Classic Outlook. Built on web technologies. Missing a lot:

• No batch printing
• No drag-and-drop to printer
• No quick print from list view
• No COM add-in support
• Limited print settings

If you rely on printing, New Outlook is a downgrade. Period.

The Outlook Rules Approach

"Just create an Outlook rule to print emails!"

You've heard this. Maybe you've tried it. Here's why it falls apart.

Classic Outlook rules can trigger "print." You create a rule that says: when an email arrives from invoices@vendor.com, print it.

Sounds perfect. Until:

• Outlook must be open. Rules only run when the desktop app is running. Close Outlook? No printing.
• No attachment printing. The "print" action prints the email body. Not the PDF attachment. Not the Word doc. The email body.
• No printer selection. It prints to whatever your default printer is. Got two printers? Too bad.
• Fragile execution. Rules sometimes just... stop working. Especially after updates.

And here's the kicker: New Outlook doesn't support the "print" action in rules at all. The option doesn't exist. So even this halfway solution is going away.

COM Add-ins: The Legacy Approach

COM add-ins are plugins that hook into Outlook's internals. Companies like Sperry Software make add-ins that auto-print emails.

The problems:

• Classic Outlook only. COM add-ins don't work in New Outlook.
• Break after updates. Every Outlook update risks breaking the add-in.
• Windows only. Mac users are out of luck.
• Outlook must be running. Close Outlook, lose printing.
• Performance impact. COM add-ins load into Outlook's process. Bad add-ins = slow Outlook.

Microsoft has been deprecating COM add-ins for years. They want developers to use Office Add-ins (web-based), which don't have local printer access.

COM add-ins are a dead end. They work today, maybe. They won't work tomorrow.

Power Automate: The Almost-Solution

Microsoft's own automation platform. You can build flows triggered by email arrival.

• Email arrives in shared mailbox
• Extract attachment
• Save to SharePoint
• Send a Teams notification

Impressive. But can it print? No.

Power Automate runs in the cloud. Your printer lives on your desk. There's no "print to local printer" action because Microsoft's cloud doesn't know your HP LaserJet exists.

You could use Power Automate to save files to a watched folder, then use a folder-watching tool to print them. But that's two systems, twice the failure points, and way more complexity than anyone signed up for.

VBA Macros: The IT Department Nightmare

Some organizations write VBA macros to auto-print emails. This works exactly until:

• Someone updates Office
• IT changes the macro security policy
• The person who wrote the macro leaves the company
• Classic Outlook gets retired

VBA macros are Classic Outlook only, fragile, hard to maintain, and a security risk. IT departments hate them for good reason.

The Standalone Solution: AutoPrintEmail

Here's a different approach. Instead of trying to make Outlook print, use a standalone app that connects directly to your Office 365 mailbox.

AutoPrintEmail does this:

1. Connects to your Office 365 account via OAuth Modern Authentication
2. Monitors your inbox (or specific folders)
3. Prints matching emails and attachments automatically
4. Runs in the background, 24/7, whether Outlook is open or not

No add-ins. It doesn't touch Outlook. It connects directly to Microsoft's mail servers using the same OAuth2 protocol that Outlook itself uses.

No Outlook required. You don't even need Outlook installed. AutoPrintEmail talks to Exchange Online / Microsoft 365 directly. This means it works on machines that only have a browser, or on servers with no GUI.

Modern Auth / MFA support. If your organization requires multi-factor authentication, AutoPrintEmail handles it. You sign in once with your Microsoft account, approve the MFA prompt, and you're set. No app passwords. No security exceptions.

What Makes It Different from Everything Else

AutoPrintEmail is the only solution that checks every box.

How It Works with Office 365

Step 1: Connect Your Account

Open AutoPrintEmail and click "Add Account." Choose Microsoft / Office 365. You'll be redirected to Microsoft's login page.

Sign in with your work email. Approve the MFA prompt if required. Done.

AutoPrintEmail uses OAuth2 tokens -- it never sees or stores your password.

Step 2: Create a Filter

Tell AutoPrintEmail what to print:

• All emails in a folder (e.g., "Print Queue")
• Emails from specific senders (e.g., invoices@vendor.com)
• Emails with specific subjects (e.g., containing "Purchase Order")
• Emails with attachments only

You can combine filters. "From accounting@company.com AND subject contains Invoice AND has attachment" -- that's one filter.

Step 3: Choose Your Printer

Pick any printer your computer can see. Network printers, USB printers, shared printers. Set your preferences:

• Paper size
• Orientation
• Duplex (double-sided)
• Number of copies
• Color or grayscale

Step 4: Let It Run

AutoPrintEmail monitors your mailbox continuously. New email matches a filter? Printed. Attachment included? Printed. At 3 AM on a Sunday? Printed.

You don't need to touch it again until your printer runs out of paper.

Shared Mailboxes and Distribution Groups

Office 365 organizations often use shared mailboxes: orders@company.com, invoices@company.com, support@company.com.

AutoPrintEmail can monitor shared mailboxes directly. If your account has access to the shared mailbox, you can add it as a monitored source.

This is huge for teams. The orders mailbox can auto-print to the warehouse. The invoices mailbox can auto-print to accounting. The support mailbox can auto-print to the front desk.

No one needs to check the shared mailbox manually. Emails just print.

Security and Compliance

For IT admins reading this:

• OAuth2 only. No stored passwords. No basic auth. No app passwords.
• Data stays local. Emails are fetched and printed on the local machine. Nothing goes to a third-party cloud.
• No admin consent required. Users can authorize the app with their own account (unless your org restricts this).
• Audit trail. AutoPrintEmail logs every print job -- what was printed, when, which printer.
• MFA compatible. Works with Conditional Access policies and Azure AD MFA.

Read more about OAuth vs IMAP connections for the technical details.

Migrating from Classic Outlook Print Rules

If you're currently using Classic Outlook rules to print emails, here's how to migrate before Microsoft forces you to New Outlook:

1. List your current print rules. Open Classic Outlook > Manage Rules > note each "print" action and its conditions.
2. Recreate as AutoPrintEmail filters. Each rule becomes a filter with the same sender/subject/folder conditions.
3. Test side by side. Run both for a week. Verify AutoPrintEmail catches everything.
4. Disable Outlook rules. Once confirmed, turn off the Outlook print rules.
5. Switch to New Outlook. You can now migrate without losing print functionality.

The whole process takes about 30 minutes.

TL;DR

Office 365 email printing options are limited and getting worse:

• OWA: Manual only, no batch
• Classic Outlook: Batch print works, but Classic is being retired
• New Outlook: No batch print, no COM add-ins
• Rules: Can't print attachments, don't work in New Outlook
• COM add-ins: Being deprecated, fragile
• Power Automate: Can't print locally

AutoPrintEmail works independently of Outlook. Connects via OAuth. Prints emails and attachments 24/7. Supports MFA. $199 lifetime.

Try AutoPrintEmail Free

Works with Office 365, Outlook.com, and Gmail. Read our automated email printing guide for setup details, or see how we fixed the batch print problem that New Outlook created.

Microsoft is making printing harder.

You don't have to accept that.