How to View an Entire Gmail Message in Full

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

By
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Writer
  • University of Vienna
A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
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Updated on September 8, 2021
Reviewed by
Jon Fisher
Jon Fisher headshot
Reviewed by Jon Fisher
  • Wichita Technical Institute
Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek.
lifewire's editorial guidelines

What to Know

  • Easiest: Open the message. Choose Print. In the browser's print dialog, pick Cancel to see the whole message.
  • Alternative: With Conversation View enabled, open a conversation and select the In New Window icon.
  • Then, scroll to view the complete conversation or select Print to display or print it.

This article explains two ways to display an entire email message in Gmail. These instructions are for the desktop version of Gmail that's accessed through a web browser.

Open Any Gmail Message in Full Using the Print Command

Gmail clips any email message that goes beyond 102KB and generates a link to the entire message. When a long Gmail message ends abruptly with "[Message clipped] View entire message," you can't see the rest of the email.

Gmail doesn't clip messages when formatting them for printing, however, and you don't have to commit them to paper to read the whole thing. 

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 Print icon in the upper-right corner of the email.

    You may need to scroll over to find the icon.

    Gmail message with the print icon highlighted

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

    Cancel button in Gmail Print dialog

  4. 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, then select Print 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 50 MB in size, but outgoing messages you send from Gmail have a 25 MB limit.

Those 25 MB 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 include with the email.

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