US Patent 7921166 Methods and systems for accessing email

A system is provided that prints email messages. The system includes a document surrogate that represents one or more email messages and a multifunction device that at least one of prints, scans, emails, faxes, and copies one or more documents. The multifunction device includes a scanning element that scans the document surrogate and electronically encodes information contained therein, a retrieval component that retrieves the one or more emails based at least in part upon information contained in the document surrogate; and a printing element that prints the one or more emails retrieved. The information is associated with at least one of the location, content, and status of the one or more email messages.