Saving Ellis Island passenger lists for FREE

When the Ellis Island database first became available, you could view an image and then right mouse click on it to save or print it. A few years ago, they disabled that option, probably because they want to sell copies of the original, full-size manifests. If you like the full size manifests that's fine but I have no need for them. I'm perfectly happy with one that fits on 8-1/2x11 paper. I played around with different options and found a solution.

When you're looking at the original ship manifest on the Ellis Island website (same location whether you used the Ellis Island search engine or Steve Morse's search tools), click on the enlarger. A new window will open with an enlarged image. I then open Microsoft Excel or Word (my preferences but this probably works with other programs). Go back to the window with the enlarged manifest image. With your left mouse button, grab the image, drag it down to the tab at the bottom of your screen so the program switches to Excel or Word and then drop the image where you want it in the open workbook/document. It may take a few seconds for it to appear. If you are using Excel, make sure the worksheet tab where you want to drop the image is the active sheet. That's it. Change your print settings (I prefer landscape with zero or close to zero margins) and you can print the image.

Remember that, starting in 1907, ship manifests were 2 pages so make sure to get both. Some of the passenger list books were microfiched from back to front so on the Ellis Island website you may have to click "previous" vs "next" to get from page 1 to page 2.