Email to print
Email to print: forward it now, pick it up at the printer.
Give your space one print address, like print@yourspace.com. People email an attachment from any phone or mail app, and it lands in their list of documents waiting to print. When they get to the printer, they check it and release it. No uploads to find, no files to move between devices.
How it works
From inbox to paper tray in three steps.
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Email the document
Send or forward it to your print address, from the email address on the sender’s account. Up to 10 attachments per email.
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It waits for them
Within a minute, every printable attachment is in their Waiting for you list, already turned into pages, for 24 hours.
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Release at the printer
They sign in on the print page, pick options, see the price and confirm, or scan the printer’s code to release.
Print by email from any device, any app.
Some documents only ever live in an inbox: a boarding pass, a signed contract, a supplier’s invoice. Email to print skips the download-then-upload dance. If someone can forward an email, they can print.
- Every mail app works. Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, a webmail tab on a borrowed laptop: there’s nothing to install.
- PDFs, photos and Office files. Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments are converted when LibreOffice is on the Commontray computer (the Commontray Box has it).
- One list for everything. Emailed and uploaded documents wait together and can be released together.
- A reply, if you want one. With an outgoing mail server set up, senders get a short note listing what arrived and what couldn’t be printed.
Email printing for offices that doesn’t become a spam printer.
An open print address is an invitation: anyone who finds it could fill your trays. Commontray’s email to print is built so that can’t happen.
- Known senders only. Mail is matched exactly to a member’s email address. Anything else is ignored, with no reply that could be used to send spam.
- Nothing prints from an email. The person still signs in and confirms on the print page, and that’s what proves who they are.
- Sender checks shown. If the receiving mail server’s own check (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) didn’t pass, the person sees “sender not verified” next to the document.
- Limits built in. At most 10 emails an hour from one address, 10 attachments per email, and 20 waiting documents per person.
- Handled once. Each message is read once, by its Message-ID, even if marking it as read fails.
Setting it up
Five minutes with a mailbox you already know how to make.
- Create a mailbox for printing with your email provider, for example print@yourspace.com.
- On the Commontray admin page, open Email to print and enter its IMAP server, address and password.
- Choose whether emails are deleted after reading, save, and select Check now to try it.
- Tell people the address. That’s it.
Charging works exactly as for any other print: after the printer finishes, for the pages it printed. See charging and credits.
Questions
Email to print questions
Does an emailed document print straight away?
No. It waits in the sender’s Waiting for you list. They open the print page, check the pages and the price, choose their options and confirm. That’s deliberate: a From address can be faked, and signing in is what proves who is printing.
Which email address should people send from?
The address on their account at your space. Commontray matches the sender exactly to a known member and ignores everything else, without replying, so the print address can’t be used to send spam.
What mailbox do we need?
Any mailbox your email provider gives you that can be read over IMAP, such as print@yourspace.com on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. You enter its server, address and password on the Commontray admin page once. The password stays on the computer running Commontray and is never shown again.
What happens to attachments that can’t be printed?
They’re skipped: calendar invites, email signatures and the like. If you set up an outgoing mail server, the sender gets a reply listing what arrived and what couldn’t be printed.
How long do emailed documents wait?
24 hours. After that they are deleted and never charged. Each person’s list holds up to 20 documents; a new one replaces their oldest.
One address. Every attachment, ready at the printer.
Turn on email to print in the admin page and your members can print from their inbox today.