This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using the Screenshot Feature
The screenshot feature is new to the Office 2010 applications. It provides the ability to capture a screenshot of an open application or a specific area of an application window by using the screen clipping tool. This enables you to place screenshots of any application, utility, or web browser window into your Office application documents. For example, you could place a screenshot of an Excel worksheet in a Word document as part of a report or you could include a screenshot of a website page on a PowerPoint slide. The possible uses of the screenshot feature are really up to you and can be quite useful if you are writing a set of procedures on how to use a particular application for a particular purpose.
You can capture screenshots in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and in Outlook when creating new email messages, appointments, tasks, and contacts. The Screenshot command is housed in the Illustrations group on the Ribbon's Insert tab, except for PowerPoint where it resides in the Images group on the Insert tab. As already mentioned, you can create a screenshot of an entire application window or specify an area to be captured. To capture an entire window, follow these steps:
- Open the application window that you will capture in the screenshot.
- Switch to the Office application that will serve as the destination for the screenshot. For example, you might insert the screenshot into a Word document or onto a PowerPoint slide.
- Select the Screenshot command. An Available Windows gallery will appear as shown in Figure 4.15.
Figure 4.15 Specify a window for the screenshot.
- Select the window that you want to capture. The entire application window will be pasted as a screenshot into the current Office application.
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The inserted screenshot can be sized or moved as needed. It is no different from any other graphic object. In fact, when the screenshot is selected, the Picture Tools Format tab becomes available on the Ribbon. You can use the commands available to manipulate and format the screenshot as you would a digital image, which we discussed earlier in this chapter. For example, you can crop the screenshot or you can adjust brightness and contrast settings using the Correction command. Styles can also be added to the screenshot using the Picture Styles gallery.
You can also capture screenshots of specific areas of a window. The Screen Clipping tool provided by the Screenshot command makes it very easy for you to use the mouse to specify the area to be captured.
Before you use the Screen Clipping tool, you need to get the open windows cued up so that you have access to the correct application window when you select the Screen Clipping tool. This is particularly important if you have more than two windows open on the Windows desktop; select the application window that contains the area you want to capture using the appropriate icon on the Windows taskbar. This places that window at the top of the windows that are currently open. Switch back to the Office application that would serve as the destination for the screenshot using that application's icon on the taskbar.
Now you can capture the screenshot: Select Screenshot and then Screen Clipping. You will be switched to the application window where you will make the screen capture. The mouse pointer becomes a screen-clipping tool. Click and drag the mouse as needed to specify the area of the window that you want to capture. When you release the mouse, you will be returned to the screenshot destination application and the screen area you selected will be pasted into to the current Office document as a screenshot. Figure 4.16 shows a portion of an Excel window that has been clipped and captured as a screenshot and placed in a PowerPoint slide.
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Figure 4.16 Capture a portion of an application window as a screenshot.
You can save your screenshots as image files for further use. Right-click on a selected screenshot and then select Save as Picture. The Save as Picture dialog box will appear. Provide a name for the screenshot and navigate to the folder that will serve as the destination for the file. By default the screenshot is saved as a PNG file. You can also save the file in other digital image formats such as GIF and JPEG and as a bitmap file.