I was recently asked how to print a range of pages from the iPad and despite having seen ‘Range’ as an available feature many times in the past I could not immediately fathom why the feature was absent under ‘Printer Options’. Experimenting on an iPhone revealed the same problem.

After a little bit of research it became clear (smacks head) that the iPad will allow you to print a range of pages only in apps that support it.

The penny has now dropped and apps like Mail or Safari will not be able to offer the range option due to the fact that web pages and emails are not structured in separate pages in the same way a pdf or word document would be.

Instead they are a continuous body of content, images, attachments and so on that reformats itself to fit the device or zoom level – for Mail or Safari to print individual pages they would have to guess how much to print on each page and which orientation would be appropriate.

Apps that support ‘print range’ include apps like Quickoffice Pro HD, Pages and iBooks.

If you have a document (for example a multipage pdf) received as an email attachment then you can ‘send’ it to another app (an app with the capability to do ‘range selection’).

Usually a pdf attachment will be displayed ‘inline’ somewhere in the main body of the email. Sometimes attachments are displayed as a simple icon* instead.

Long Tap on the attachment and when the grid of available options appear just choose an appropriate app.

If the attachment is a pdf then you could use iBooks to print.

One problem with sending to iBooks is that the pdf will then be stored in your iBook shelves unless you then follow through and delete it.
Another issue is that a different type of document, .docx for example, might require you to select a different app instead of iBooks.

Further research reveals an iOS app called Print Agent Pro which can handle most of these file types and offers a few more functions.
Print Agent Pro is $6 for iPad and $4 for iPhone. I’ve yet to test it out, but it sure looks to be the ticket.

*Interestingly, a readable attachment that doesn’t display inline can be printed using Range Selection by long tapping, then tapping Print from the available options.