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Capturing a Screen Shot

Have you ever wanted to capture exactly what shows on your computer monitor to show someone else? Perhaps your son or daughter wants to capture what appears on the screen to insert into a report to illustrate a point. Maybe Tommy wants to make an easy computer manual for his best friend Billy because Billy just got his first computer and he needs help doing many basic functions. Tommy thinks that by adding screen shots to the manual Billy will be more comfortable because he will know what to expect. Of course there are commercial programs, with bells and whistles, that can be purchased to do such a job, but I'd like to share with you directions for doing it with your computer at no additional expense. I'm going to imbed a screen shot in my directions about capturing screen shots. The basic sequence of what we are going to do is capture a screen shot and paste it into another document. We'll use the ALT key and the Print Screen Key on the keyboard. When you press the two keys, the computer puts a copy of the active screen onto your machine's clipboard. You can then paste the screen shot into another document or programs such as word processing (e.g. Word), spreadsheets (e.g. Excel), drawing (e.g., CorelDraw), or painting (e.g., Paintbrush). You can capture several screen shots, one at a time, and paste them into the same document so that the final document has several screen shots in it.

Directions for capturing a screen shot:

  1. Open Microsoft Word, open a new blank document and then minimize that document.
  2. Open the item where you want to take the screen shot (a word document, a PowerPoint slide, and Excel worksheet, etc.) or go to a site on the Internet.
  3. Center the newly opened document or web site so that the area you want to capture is easily visible. If you have a long document or web page, you will have to capture it in sections, one at a time.
  4. When centered, hold down the ALT key while pressing the Print Screen (Prnt Scrn) key.

    Screen shot of personal computer keyboard indicating location of Print Screen and ALT keys.

  5. Maximize the Word document.
  6. Place your cursor at the place where you wish to place the screen shot.
  7. Go to Edit in the pull-down menu and select paste.
  8. Your screen shot should now appear where you wanted it to be.
  9. Save your Word document.

If you wish to continue adding screen shots to the same word document, repeat the steps. Note that you can type information above or beneath the screen shots to identify what it is you want to show in the screen shot. You can also enlarge or reduce the size of the screen shot. You would put your cursor on the shot and click the mouse. Small black squares will appear at the four corners and in the center of each side of the picture. If you place your cursor on any one of the corners until a double-ended arrow appears, you can drag the corner into the center of the image to reduce the size or drag the corner out to enlarge it. I hope you find this tip helpful. Feel free to share it with friends or other family members!