The most basic and simple way to take a screen-shot (screen-snap, snapshot, screen capture, whatever you call it) dating back to Windows 95 (3.1 even maybe?) is this:
- Press [Print Screen] button on keyboard.
- Open Wordpad (comes with windows by default – substitue with an Oddice product like Word for documentation or Outlook for an email)
- Use the paste function (Ctrl+V or Edit > Paste).
- Admire the pretty picture that just got inserted.
- Do something with the document.
This will just take a raw bitmat (.bmp) snapshot of the entire screen, then insert the image content into the chosen application. For more advanced, fine tune control over your screen shots you’ll need a few tools. Windows Vista and Windows 7 come with a tool call ‘Snipping Tool’ which can be used to capture only the content of a user selected area.
For Windows XP you’ll have to use a 3rd party tool. If you have MS Office on your XP machine, odds are you’ll have a little used program called Office Picture Manager (Start > All Programs > MS Office > MS Office Tools > MS Office Picture Manager). You can use this application in lieu of Wordpad in step 2 above, then use it’s editing functionality to crop the screenshot down to only the portion you need. You can then save the image as a JPG or PNG to reduce it’s file size.
