Screen captures or screenshots
Sometimes you might like to make a snapshot of what appears on your computer screen. Maybe you want a picture of a complicated error message to send to a technician. Or maybe you want to show someone a picture of a particular feature of a program. Whatever your reason, there is a readily available built-in way to make a screenshot of the display on a Windows computer. It is an old trick but, nonetheless, it isn’t as widely known as you might think.
To capture the complete screen display, press the Print Screen (or PrtScr) key. Then open the Windows accessory Paint. Generally Paint can be opened by going to Start-All Programs-Accessories. When Paint is open, go to the Edit menu and click “Paste”. An image of your screen should appear. Next open the File menu and click “Save As”. Choose a name for the file and the place where you want it saved. Generally, it is probably better to save as the file type JPEG. The default file type is a 24-bit bitmap but that will be a much larger file than a JPEG. To capture only the active window and not the whole screen, press the keyboard combination Alt+Print Screen. Then use Paint as previously described.
Actually, you do not have to use Paint if you prefer something else. Since the screen capture is an image saved in Clipboard, you can paste into an application of your choice. For example, you can paste into a Microsoft Word document or PowerPoint slide.
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