An image of an active window on your computer that you can paste into a document.

Symptoms

Capturing a snapshot of your computer screen is called a screenshot or screen capture. Once captured, the screenshot is automatically copied to your computer clipboard.

You can then paste the screenshot into a document, email message, file, or image editor (Paint, for example). Alternately, you can save the screenshot as a file, and then insert it as a picture into a document, email message, another file, or image editor.

NOTE: The Print Screen key is typically located in the upper right corner of the keyboard. Some keyboard models label the Print Screen key differently, such as PrintScreen, PrntScrn, PrntScr, PrtScn, PrtScr, PrtSc, or a similar abbreviation. In this article, we use the PrntScrn abbreviation to represent any key label variations.

Other keyboards may not have a separate Print Screen key. In this case, you can perform the Print Screen function by pressing and holding down the Fn + Insert keys together.

Figure 1: Illustration of the print screen key on Dell KM5221W wireless keyboard.

Figure 2: Illustration of the print screen key on Dell Precision 5550 mobile workstation keyboard.

Cause

The Print Screen function operates slightly differently in each Windows operating system.

Resolution

Using the Print Screen Key in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8

To capture the entire screen:

• Press the Windows logo key + PrntScrn key together.
  On tablets, press the Windows logo button + the volume down button together. (The screenshot is saved in the Screenshots folder in the Pictures folder.)

To capture all active windows:

• Press the PrntScrn key.

To capture a single active window:

• Tap or click the window that you want to capture.
  Press the Alt + PrntScrn keys together.

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Once you have captured the desired screen or window using the Print Screen key, you must take additional steps. Paste the captured image into an image editor such as Microsoft Paint or Photoshop to edit or save it. Open the appropriate application and use the Ctrl-V key combination to paste the image into a new image document.

For more complex screen captures, refer to the Snipping Tool in Windows.

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Q. How do I copy an image that’s on my computer screen? I notice there’s a key on my keyboard that says Print Screen, but when I strike it, nothing seems to happen.

A. Actually something does happen, but it happens off screen, so to speak. When you press Print Screen, the image on the screen is saved in the system’s Clipboard, which is where copied (Ctrl+C) or cut (Ctrl+X) material is temporarily stored. If you want to copy an image of the entire window that is currently active, press Print Screen. Then go to where you want to place the image and press Ctrl+V or click on Edit, Paste, and it will appear. If, on the other hand, you only want to copy the image—not the entire screen—press Alt+Print Screen. Once the graphic is in your document, you can crop or trim any part of the picture.

This function works for any application and anything on the screen since it captures the image, not the underlying data that makes up the image.

If you are using Word 6 or Word 95, and you want to crop a graphic, follow these steps: Click on what you want to crop; that generates eight boxes, called handles, which appear around the graphic. If you hold down the Shift key and click on a handle, the mouse pointer becomes a cropping tool. Drag the handle to the center of the graphic and stop when you’ve cut away the desired amount.

If you are using Word 97 or Word 2000, follow these steps: Click View, Toolbars, and select Picture from the menu. You should then see the Picture toolbar (see below), which contains a cropping tool

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Now click once on the graphic and a box with eight handles will appear around it. Click on the cropping tool on the Picture toolbar and on one of the handles next to where you want the graphic cropped. Then drag the cropping tool, stopping when you have cut the desired amount.

Pull the cropping tool to the left to remove part of the picture.

If you do lots of screen captures, you may want to invest in a special application that does the job in more sophisticated ways—such as saving the image to various formats or copying only parts of it. One popular program is SnagIt. For more information go to www.snagit.com .

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