How to perform a print screen in Windows?
How to perform a print screen in Windows? |
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Created: 15th December 2000
In the wonderful days of DOS, you could easily perform a "print screen" by pressing the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard and out came the image (minus any graphics) on to the printer. Now with Windows it isn't that easy - the beauty of technology!
To do a print screen, you need to create a copy of the image of the your computer screen, paste it into a program like Paint or Microsoft word, and then print using this program.
Print Screen is very useful to capture error messages and then e-mail them as proof to the developer.
On most North American keyboards, you will find a key that says "PrtScn" or "Print Screen". By pressing this key, Windows will take a screen shot of the entire screen and store it in memory. Sometimes you may need to press "Shift+PrintScreen".
If you have multiple windows open, and want a print screen of the current active window only, you can do so by pressing "Alt+PrintScreen".
The one "disturbing" item with the Print Screen key, is that when you press it nothing indicates that an image has been pasted into memory.
Once you have pressed Print Screen, you need to run a program that will allow you to paste the image stored in memory into the program so you can print it.
Microsoft Word is good, or by favourite, Microsoft Paint which you run by clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint.
Once you have a program running, select Paste from the Edit menu and voila, an image should appear.