Capturing a Screen

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 17, 2016)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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There may be times when you need to include a screen shot within your Word document. The easiest way to do this is as follows:

  1. Set up your screen to look the way you want it to.
  2. Press the PrintScreen key. This copies the screen to the Clipboard.
  3. Start Word (if it is not already started) and position the insertion point where you want the screen inserted.
  4. Press Ctrl+V to paste the contents of the Clipboard.

This action results in the entire screen being pasted in your document. If you wanted, instead, to only copy and paste a single dialog box or the active window, simply use Alt+PrintScreen in step 2.

If either of these methods still does not fit your needs (for instance, you want to include only a small part of the screen), you can use the following:

  1. Set up your screen to look the way you want it to.
  2. Press the PrintScreen key. This copies the screen to the Clipboard.
  3. Start your favorite graphics editing program and maximize the screen.
  4. Press Ctrl+V to paste the contents of the Clipboard into the graphics program.
  5. Use the editing tools in the graphics program to change the image as desired.
  6. Use the editing tools to crop the image so that it contains only the portion you want within Word.
  7. Select the entire image in the graphics program and press Ctrl+C to copy it to the Clipboard.
  8. Start Word (if it is not already started) and position the insertion point where you want the image inserted.
  9. Press Ctrl+V to paste the contents of the Clipboard.

You should note that instead of pressing Ctrl+V to paste an image into Word, you can also use the Paste Special option from the Edit menu. This option gives you greater control over how an image is inserted in your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1146) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is five minus 1?

2016-09-18 01:44:38

Colin

Word (like all the new Office products) itself has a built in screen capture (Insert, Screenshot). I put this on the Quick Access Toolbar as this is one of the features I use regularly.


2016-09-18 00:35:32

Bob Aikenhead

For portions of screen its much easier to use a screen capture program - many available. I find Screen Hunter (free) does what I need quickly and simply. Options to include/exclude cursor etc.


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