How do I grab a screen shot / capture in Windows 7?

I'm writing a research report on Microsoft Windows and need to be able to take screen captures or grabs and include them in the document. I know that "print screen" is supposed to accomplish that, but I'm just not sure how it works. Can you explain how to take a screen capture in MS Windows 7, please?

Dave's Answer:

As someone who spends a lot of time on a Macintosh system where capturing the screen to a file is as easy as a three key combination (Command-Shift-3) and capturing a selection or subset of a screen is Command-Shift-4, I'm always amazed that there isn't a similar capability in Windows that would make it braindead simple to save what you're seeing on the screen to a file. There just isn't.

On the other hand, with a little bit of effort, it's quite possible to capture what's on your Windows screen and drop it into a graphics editor, then take that image and either crop it, resize it or simply save it as a file on your hard drive. Then you can email it to someone, incorporate it into a document, whatever.

The trick is to understand the PRTSCR button on your keyboard. Yup, the one that seems to accomplish absolutely nothing when you press it. Turns out that it does actually do something: it takes a copy of what's on your screen and saves it in the copy/paste buffer, meaning that you could then, for example, paste the image directly into a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation.

More interestingly, when combined with the slick Microsoft Paint program, you can also quite easily paste the image into the app, tweak it as desired, and save it to your disk.

Let me show you how it's done...

First off, look on your keyboard, you'll doubtless find a key similar to:

See what we want? It's labeled "Insert", but in smaller type it says "PrtScr". Since it's the smaller type, it means I'm going to need to use a two-key sequence of Function + the key, so in this case it'd be Function+PrtScr.

Press these keys on your computer and nothing happens.

But something has happened: a copy of your screen has now been dumped into the copy/paste buffer.

To see it, we'll launch Microsoft Paint, and the easiest way to do that is to go to the START menu:

See that box on the lower left that says "Search programs and files"? Click on it and type in "paint":

At this point you can click on the word "Paint" or, since it's a unique program name, you can also more easily simply press Return or Enter after typing in "paint" and the program will launch directly.

When started, though, there's not much to see in MS Paint:

On the top left click on "Paste" and, like magic, a copy of what was on the screen when you pressed Function-PrtScr shows up:

At this point you can use the crop tool, the resize tool, or otherwise hack and slash at the image. Or you can simply click on the little floppy icon on the top left when you're ready to save the image to disk (or press Ctrl-S, actually). When you do, a window pops up as usual:

Take note of where you're going to save the file, then give it a memorable name and click "Save". Done. You just took a screen shot, edited it, and saved it to your hard disk. Not too bad.

Now, a handy shortcut. If you think you're going to be doing this a lot, when you haeve Paint running, right-click on the icon on the menu bar and check out what's shown:

If you "pin" the application to the menu bar, the icon will always be available without you having to worry about typing "paint" into the start menu!

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Comments (9) · Add Comment

That's good to know, but how do I grab a screen shot from Windows running on an Apple MacBook Pro? Is it even possible, since there's no "PrtScr" key?

Posted by: Eric at June 3, 2011 9:36 AM

"As someone who spends a lot of time on a Macintosh system where capturing the screen to a file is as easy as a three key combination (Command-Shift-3) and capturing a selection or subset of a screen is Command-Shift-4, I'm always amazed that there isn't a similar capability in Windows that would make it braindead simple to save what you're seeing on the screen to a file. There just isn't"

Actually, there is. Well, in Windows 7 there is anyway. The 'Snipping tool', included in Win7 is a great way to take a screenshot of a portion of the screen.

For full-screen though, as you've advised, another little shortcut is the CTRL > PRTSC key combo will give you the entire screen, whereas ALT > PRTSC will copy only the active Window. Then, pasting as normal.

Hope something there clarifies a little anyway.

Posted by: Just J at June 3, 2011 9:53 AM

Eric, if you're running Windows within VMWare or similar, just use the Mac screen capture tool: Cmd-Shift-3. If you're using Boot Camp, well, um, I dunno.

Just J, you're right, I forgot to mention the slick tip of ALT+FNC+PRTSCR to just capture the single topmost window in this article. Still, I want it to have the option of saving to disk automatically, not making me go through the hassle of launching Paint, pasting and saving shot after shot...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at June 3, 2011 10:07 AM

Minor addition to the available Windows tools: Using the Alt key with Print Screen will capture only the currently active window.

If you have multiple windows open, or only want a shot of some specific window, like the Options (Properties), holding down Alt and doing whatever is required for Print Screen will take only the active window, eliminating the need to crop background.

Posted by: Chrystoph at June 3, 2011 12:26 PM

Dave, I was curious about a Boot Camp solution; sorry I wasn't clear about that earlier. I found the answer though.

Depending on the Function Key checkbox setting on the Keyboard tab of the Boot Camp Control Panel, press Shift + F11 [+ fn] to capture the entire screen, or Alt + Shift + F11 [+ fn] to capture the active window only.

Posted by: Eric at June 4, 2011 6:51 AM

"I'm always amazed that there isn't a similar capability in Windows that would make it braindead simple to save what you're seeing on the screen to a file. There just isn't."

Wow. Why was that snark required? "There just isn't" is factually incorrect.

The following behavior is the same, regardless of which version of Windows you are running. I'll try to use "normal" terminology, for those of you who were confused by the author's weird references (i.e. "copy/paste buffer" instead of the standard "clipboard"):

1) In all cases, using the Print Screen (PrtScr) button captures an image to the clipboard. What you do with it, after that, is up to you. You can paste the image anywhere that will accept an image ... in a new graphic file (as in the above demo), into an email message, into a document, etc.etc.

2) Using the Print Screen button, alone (or in tandem with the Ctrl key), captures the entire window. It grabs the Task Bar, the open application windows ... everything you see in your monitor screen.

3) Using Alt+Print Screen captures only the "active" application window ... i.e. whichever application window you are currently using, the one that "has focus"

Let's try not to paint your visitors as complete idiots, okay? Windows 7 is a really good operating system, equal in my eyes to OSX. Of course, both pale in comparison to a real operating system, but for consumers who haven't got a lot of computer knowledge, either will do just fine, and will get all of the tasks done that need doing.

Posted by: Stupidscript at June 6, 2011 3:04 PM

"Stupid", let's keep this in context: I didn't say that Windows 7 didn't have a nice screen capture utility, my complaint was that there's no way to *save it to disk* without jumping through hoops a la MS Paint, as shown in this article. Not sure why you're so hostile about my comment, then agree with me in your additional explanation... ?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at June 6, 2011 4:11 PM

He this is great, all these years I've seen this button and never realised it worked.
I still have Vista and it works fine on that too.
Thanks.

Posted by: kiply at June 7, 2011 1:58 AM

Use the Windows Snipping Tool. It is included in all WIN 7 releases. Use the Windows Search command to find it. START>>SEARCH>> type Snipping tool

Official page here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/snipping-tool

Works great and works on Macs running Win 7 too!

I can't believe nobody know about this!

Posted by: Robert Stewart at June 7, 2011 4:47 PM

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!