How to View an Entire Gmail Message in Full

Use your printer to show an entire lengthy Gmail message on screen

Gmail show entire message
Cairo/Flickr.com
by Heinz Tschabitscher
An independent writer who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated December 16, 2018

Gmail clips any email message that goes beyond 102kB, a relatively small size that includes all the header information you don't usually see, and generates a link to the entire message. When a long Gmail message ends abruptly with "[Message clipped] View entire message"—and, you suspect, with its best and finishing part left out—what do you do? A surprising number of people do nothing and never see the rest of the email. Some people click the link and are frustrated when nothing happens. You can open the email in a separate browser window, but that yields the same ending in a different format, or you can take a look at the source. Everything is there for sure, just not in a legible format.

Fortunately, Gmail doesn't clip messages when formatting them for printing, and you don't have to commit them to paper to take a look at the complete message. 

Open Any Gmail Message in Full Using the Print Command

When you receive a lengthy Gmail message, and you want to show the entire message in its entirety on screen:

  1. Open the message.

  2. Click the three vertical dots next to the Reply button near the top of the message.

    Three vertical dot menu in Gmail message view

  3. Select Print.

    Print button in Gmail

  4. When the browser's print dialog comes up, click Cancel.

    Cancel button in Gmail Print dialog

  5. The entire email appears on the screen that opens. You can now scroll to view the entire message.

Open a Gmail Conversation in Full

If you enable Conversation View in Gmail, an alternate method to open a Gmail conversation in full is:

  1. Open the conversation.

  2. Click the In New Window icon that appears next to the Print icon at the top of the screen.

    In new window button in Gmail

  3. Scroll to view the contents of the conversation. Click the Print icon to display or print the entire conversation.

    Print button in Gmail New Window pop-out

About Gmail Length Limits

Although there is no limit to the length of a Gmail message from a text standpoint, there is a limit to the size of the message complete with text, attached files, headers, and encoding. You can receive a message size in Gmail up to 50MB in size, but outgoing messages you send from Gmail have a 25MB limit, which includes any attachments, your message, and all the headers. Even the encoding makes the file grow a bit. If you attempt to send a larger file, you receive an error, or Google offers to store any large attachments on Google Drive and issue a link you can send with the email.