About this lesson
Learn how to capture a picture of your screen and use in a document.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Screenshots .docx205.3 KB Screenshots - Solution.docx
253.2 KB
Quick reference
Screenshots
Learn how to capture a picture of your screen and use in a document.
When to use
This is a useful tool to take screenshots of anything on your screen you would like to share or keep as a record, for example sending an error message to your IT department.
Instructions:
Open a second Word document or a 2nd Microsoft program, for example Excel, Outlook or PowerPoint. Maybe even an internet session.
- Click Insert, Screenshot and observe the available screens. Click one and it will insert a “clip” of that screen into your document.
- Click Insert, Screenshot and click SCREEN CLIPPING.
- The Word window that you have open will minimize and show any second window on the screen. Observe how the screen looks faded, almost list a fog cover, and your mouse has changed to a black crossbar.
- Click and drag over a section of the ribbon and when you let go of the mouse button, that “clip” or “screenshot” will appear on your original document.
- The Word window that you have open will minimize and show any second window on the screen. Observe how the screen looks faded, almost list a fog cover, and your mouse has changed to a black crossbar.
This is a useful tool to take screenshots of error messages if you need to email an IT person about a problem on your computer. You would simply copy the error message screenshot and paste it into an email.
- Use the CROP tool
on the Picture Tools ribbon to remove portions of the clip.
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- 00:05 Hello, in this lesson I wanna teach about screenshots.
- 00:08 It's a little known feature that's been in the last couple versions of Word.
- 00:11 First of all they are on the Insert ribbon, and if I float my
- 00:15 mouse right here on Screenshot you can see a little description.
- 00:18 But before we do that let's make sure you have everything ready to practice this.
- 00:22 So open up a second Word document, and also,
- 00:25 open up a second Word program like Excel or PowerPoint or Outlook.
- 00:30 And then, what we're gonna do is place our insertion point where we
- 00:33 actually want the screenshot to land.
- 00:36 All right.
- 00:36 So, here we go.
- 00:37 Go ahead and click on Inserts.
- 00:39 And then on Screenshots,
- 00:40 what will happen is I’ll show you the second Word program that I have open,
- 00:44 Word document, and, the PowerPoint program that I have in the background.
- 00:48 So, that’s the one I’m gonna use for this example.
- 00:50 It’s going to take an entire screenshot corner to corner, so
- 00:53 click and watch what happens, there it is.
- 00:57 I didn't have to do anything special.
- 00:59 I didn't have to know any super secrets of computers to do this,
- 01:03 I just had to know the screenshot.
- 01:05 Now another thing that happens is our picture tools and our format ribbon
- 01:08 came up so I can re-color this, I can put frames on it, I can put borders on it,
- 01:13 wrap text around it, align it, and I can even change the size of it.
- 01:18 So I'm just going to type in 2, for 2" right here, and
- 01:21 when I click on to the next box, as you can see, it auto-resized itself.
- 01:26 Now let me see here.
- 01:28 There we go. When I clicked back to it,
- 01:29 you can see it went, when I typed 2", it changed the width to 3.15".
- 01:34 Pretty great for not having to do too much work.
- 01:37 So how about that for putting a screenshot of an example in your document?
- 01:41 All right, let's roll down, let's do a screen clipping this time.
- 01:44 So under number 2, again place my insertion point.
- 01:49 And this time, I'm going to go to Insert, and hit Screenshot again.
- 01:54 But further down, we have Screen Clipping.
- 01:57 Now, when I hit Screen Clipping, what's gonna happen is you can see my second
- 02:02 document open, but it looks like a grey fog has been laid over my screen.
- 02:06 So at this point, I'm just going to click and
- 02:08 drag a section of the screen of the toolbar.
- 02:13 And let go and there it is.
- 02:15 That little section.
- 02:16 Now please, imagine with me that this is an error message that you need to send
- 02:21 to your IT department to prove to them that you are having this error.
- 02:25 You don't have to retype it or waste any of that kind of time.
- 02:29 Just go in, hit Insert, screen clipping,
- 02:32 grab a picture of the error message and done.
- 02:34 Put that in your email.
- 02:35 All right, let's go a step further.
- 02:37 I've got a message down here about cropping.
- 02:40 So, if ever you get a screenshot in there or
- 02:43 a screen clipping that you now wanna crop, please notice your Picture Tools format.
- 02:47 We do have the cropping button right over here.
- 02:49 When I activate that, I get these little black bars.
- 02:52 I can just float my mouse on the black bar and
- 02:54 just crop out the section that I don't need to show.
- 02:57 And when I click off of it, that section will vanish.
- 03:00 There you go.
- 03:01 And one more step, if you do wanna put a frame on this, click on screen clipping.
- 03:07 Picture tools format, and go ahead and
- 03:09 choose any of the frames that are available right in here.
- 03:13 And so that's it.
- 03:15 A little bit of magic buried on the insert screenshot section.
- 03:19 Please use it.
- 03:20 It is awesome.
- 03:21 Thank you.
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