Capturing Screenshots
You can use Word’s Screenshot tool to add a snapshot of any open window on your desktop and immediately insert it into a document. You can also use it to take a clipping of a portion of anything open on the desktop, such as a sticky note or a game screen.
For example, maybe you’re assembling a department budget in Excel and you want to grab a picture of your progress to include in a memo document you’re creating in Word. You can capture the Excel window as a screenshot and tuck it away in your Word document as an illustration of how things are going. Or how about this: You’re working on a report about a newly discovered iguana and want to grab a picture of the news story from your web browser window so you can read and reference it later. You can do this with the Screenshot tool. Pretty nifty, eh?
The feature keeps track of the current windows you have open, even though you’re busy working in Word. It also keeps track of multiple Word documents you have open, so you can use it to snap screenshots from one document to insert into another. The key to using the feature is to make sure the window you want to capture is not minimized on the Windows Taskbar, but open onscreen.
Ready to give this a whirl? Start by opening a program window or Windows feature you want to capture. Remember, it can be any kind of window—a game, a sticky note, the Windows calculator, a photo viewer, web browser, and so on.
Display the Word window and click the Insert tab. Now click the Screenshot drop-down arrow, as shown in Figure 15.11, and click the window you want to insert. Boom, that was fast—the captured window is immediately inserted! Figure 15.12 shows an example of a screenshot.
FIGURE 15.11Use the Screenshot tool to add a screenshot of any open window or Windows feature.
FIGURE 15.12 The screenshot is immediately added to your document, complete with a border.
Now let’s try out a screen clipping. Again, start by having the window open that you want to clip from, such as a photo album, web page, or game. Next, click the Insert tab and click the Screenshot drop-down arrow. Click Screen Clipping (see Figure 15.11 to locate this command). The first time you use the screen clipping tool, it’s a little odd because your screen turns a foggy white color and the mouse pointer turns into a crosshair icon, like you see in Figure 15.13, but that’s just your cue to drag across the clipping you want to capture. So, drag across the part of the screen you want to clip, as shown in Figure 15.14. The part you’re clipping becomes clear as you drag. As soon as you release the mouse button, the area you dragged over is inserted into your Word document, much like what you see in Figure 15.15. Don’t wait too long to drag over the clipping area or the function times out and you have to start all over again.
FIGURE 15.13 The first phase of the screen clip turns your screen foggy.
FIGURE 15.14 The second part of the process is to drag over the area you want to clip.
FIGURE 15.15 The screenshot is immediately added to your document.
Move the crosshair icon to the upper-left corner where you want to clip
I’ll bet you’re starting to see the future potential of this tool, right? Like any other graphic element you add to Word, the Format tab opens with your selected screenshot or clip, and you can apply picture attributes to the image. We’ll cover more on those in Chapter 16. You can also move and resize any screenshot or clipping in your document, treating it just like any other graphic element.