007 Web Tools

I’ve had a couple of calls in the last few weeks involving making a printed copy of what can easily be read on the screen. Either Adobe PDFs were acting up of or screen colors didn’t print well and what you see is not what you get. One quick and easy solution is to copy the contents of the screen to the clipboard and paste it into Word…then print.

Both Windows and Macintosh have built-in screen capture utilities that are very easy to use. They are wonderful tools for creating tutorials or demonstrating a step-by-step process. Sometimes call screen-shots, images can be created using a simple keystroke combination.

If you a using a Windows PC, press the Print Screen key (often located in the cluster of keys to the right of the standard keyboard, above the arrow keys) to copy the current screen to the clipboard. If you want to capture only the current window, press Alt-Print Screen. Remember that only one image can be stored in memory at a time. Open Word or PowerPoint and paste the contents of the clipboard into the current document — Edit: Paste or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-v).

If on are using a Mac, press Control-Command-Shift-3 to copy the screen to the clipboard. You can also press Command-Shift-3 to copy the contents of the screen to a file on your desktop. Use Control-Command-Shift-4 or Command-Shift-4 to select only a portion of the screen. The cursor changes to a cross-hair that will allow you to select any size rectangle. The Mac also has a built-in utility called Grab that allows more sophisticated features (delayed capture, menu capture, conversion to other formats.) Grab can usually be found in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

Once you have captured the image you can paste it into Word or PowerPoint, resize or crop the image, and Bob’s your uncle.