How to Print Only Part of a Webpage

You open a recipe, a long article or an order confirmation, and the part you need is right at the top. Under it comes 200 comments, a row of "You may also like", a newsletter box and a huge footer. Hit print and you get nine pages, and eight of them are junk. Picking a page range is guesswork, because the print window has no idea where the useful part ends, and erasing every block one by one takes forever.

There's a free tool for exactly this: Smart Print Pro

Smart Print Pro is a free Chrome extension that cleans up any webpage before you print it or save it as a PDF. Auto-Clean removes the obvious clutter, like ads, banners and cookie popups. And for everything that sits below the part you want, it has a tool named Cut Below.

How Cut Below works

Turn it on and move your mouse over the page: whatever you point at gets a purple outline. Click the last thing you want to keep, and everything after it is gone: the rest of the page, the comments, the related posts, the footer. The tool switches itself off after one cut and shows "Cut Complete!", so you will not cut something by accident.

One thing to remember: the spot you click stays. Click the last paragraph you want, not the first thing you do not want. Everything happens in your own browser tab, the real website is never touched, and if you reload the page it comes back exactly as it was.

How to use it — step by step

Install Smart Print Pro. Add Smart Print Pro from the Chrome Web Store. Free, no account needed.
Open the page and clean it first. Hit Auto-Clean to wipe the ads and banners. Details are in the guide on printing a webpage without ads.
Turn on Cut Below. Click Cut Below in the panel, or press Alt+C. The page gets a purple hover outline.
Click the last line you want. Everything below it disappears at once.
Check it and print. Press Ctrl+P to print or save as a PDF. Cut the wrong spot? Press Alt+Z to undo and try again.

What it is good for

Printing a recipe or a how-to without the comment section.
Saving an article as a PDF without "related posts", newsletter boxes and a giant footer.
Keeping only the first post of a long forum thread or Q&A page.
Printing a receipt or an order confirmation without the upsell blocks and legal small print.
Cutting a printout from nine pages down to one or two, and saving ink while you are at it.

Need to remove something in the middle or at the top instead? That is a job for the Eraser, and if a line of text needs fixing, Edit Mode does that.

Get the extension

Smart Print Pro is completely free. Auto-Clean handles most pages on its own, and Cut Below is there for the moment the useful part ends halfway down the page.

Smart Print Pro already saves your ink by wiping ads off the page. Want to keep even more cash in your pocket? Grab premium replacement ink and toner through 4inkjets →

This is a paid link. If you buy through it, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure →

Good to know before you start

Look at the preview before you print. Auto-Clean removes ads and clutter by pattern, and can also remove real parts such as notes, footnotes, embedded maps or videos.
Undo goes back up to 10 steps. After an Undo, some interactive parts of the page may need a reload.
It doesn't work on PDFs, Chrome's own pages or the Chrome Web Store.
Print settings belong to the browser: background graphics, headers and footers and margins are set in the print dialog.
Images that load only when you scroll may stay blank, so scroll to the bottom of the page before you print.

FAQ

No. It only changes what your browser shows in this tab, so the cut exists on your screen and in the printout or PDF you make. Reload the page and everything comes back.

Yes. Press Alt+Z or click Undo in the panel to bring the page back one step, then try again. Reset Page reloads the whole page if you want to start from scratch.

Cut Below only removes what comes after the spot you click. To remove something at the top or in the middle, use the Eraser, which takes out one block at a time.

The block you click stays, along with everything inside it, and only what comes after it goes. If a big block like the whole article was clicked, little disappears. Undo, then click a smaller piece, like the last paragraph you want to keep.

How to Print Only Part of a Webpage: Cut Off Everything Below a Point