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Capturing a screen with open menus into Word
To take a screen grab of the active window, you would normally press
[Alt] + [Print Scrn]. However, as soon as you press [Alt], your opened
menu will close.
What you'll need to do instead is to just press [Print Scrn]. This is
typically at the top of the keyboard above the cursor (arrow) keys. Pressing
[Print Scrn] captures the full screen, including the Start button, taskbar,
anything else running behind the active window, etc., so it's not ideal.
However, there's an easy way around it.
Taking a screen grab and pasting it directly into Word is the easiest
method of doing what you're trying to achieve. However, it's also the
method that will give you the worst results. As you're capturing an entire
screen, Word will shrink the image to fit within the limits of the width
of the page. You'll end up with everything so small that you can hardly
see it. So you need to trim the screen grab first.
Once you've pressed [Print Scrn], open Paint or Paintbrush or your preferred
image editing software such as Paint Shop Pro. Use the 'Paste' option
to insert the screen grab into a picture file in the image editing program.
Now use the software's tools to trim the image so that you end up with
only the part of the screen image that you're trying to show to the reader
of your manual.
Save the image. A 24-bit bitmap (BMP) file will retain a perfect level
of quality but it can also result in a large file size. Put a few of
these into your training manual and your Word document could end up being
massive. You can alternatively save it to a JPEG file or 256-colour bitmap
in order to get a much smaller file size, at the expense of a bit of
loss in quality.
Once you have the picture saved, find the point in your Word document
where you want to insert it and click the Insert menu, then Picture,
then Picture From File. Different versions of Word might have slightly
different menu options but you'll get the idea.
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