Welcome to our newest tip of the month!
Have you ever wondered how to take screenshots of your computer? Never got around to looking it up? Have no idea where to start? The wait is over, brought to you by yours truly. The trick lies in the keyboard.
For Windows: In your aimless roving over your keyboard late at night over your 15th cup of coffee, have you noticed the <Print Screen> key? If not, it’s usually located just to the right of the F12 key. If so, then you’re in luck, because that’s all you have to hit! This takes a screenshot of your entire screen and makes it the next thing you paste. Whether you’re working in Word or want to send it to someone in Outlook – or even save it for future reference – all you have to do now is paste it! Right-click -> Paste, or for you keyboard junkies out there, Ctrl+V.
For Macs: Ah, well here the game gets a little trickier. Apple doesn’t like having a Print Screen key on their keyboards, but they sure do love that Command button, don’t they? Yours is a key combination, Command+Shift+3. Oh, did we mention that it also saves the screenshot automatically as a PNG file on your Desktop? How sweet! We <3 you, Apple (see what I did there? *cough*)! Now we don’t have to worry about that Ctrl+V nonsense….oh wait, no that’s Command+V here, isn’t it? D’oh…
Now wait a second, what about getting specific windows? Ah, well there are answers for both Windows and Mac. For Windows, you simply add Alt to your efforts. Click on the window you want to capture, then use Alt+<Print Screen> to copy to your Clipboard. For Macs, you change your command to Command+Shift+4 instead of 3, then press Spacebar and select the window to capture. Once again, that nifty Mac OS X software saves a convenient PNG file to your desktop.
Are you wanting to know how to take screenshots to get help with your computer next time it breaks? Email us to ask about setting up a maintenance subscription today and prevent issues from forming in the first place!