Patent ID: 7921166

Claim:
A system that prints email messages, comprising: a document surrogate that represents a plurality of email messages selected by a user, said document surrogate including multiple selection areas corresponding to each selected email message, wherein said multiple selection areas can accept a user generated mark indicative of a desired function said function including at least one of print, reply, reply all, delete, and mark as read; a multifunction device that prints, scans, emails, faxes, and copies one or more documents, the multifunction device includes: a scanning element that scans the document surrogate, electronically encodes information contained therein, and retrieves data contained in the one or more multiple selection areas, the information is associated with at least one of the location, content, and status of the one or more email messages; a retrieval component that establishes a connection to one or more mail servers remote to the multifunction device, searches associated contents of said one or more mail server, and retrieves the one or more emails selected based at least in part upon information contained in the document surrogate, said retrieval component including memory that stores the retrieved emails; and a printing element that prints the one or more emails retrieved.