How can I capture the contents of a window or the screen in Windows?

In Windows 95/98/NT/XP, you can capture the image of either the entire screen, or only the currently active window. Once you have the image captured, you can import that information into an image editor to save or manipulate it.

• To capture the contents of the currently active window, press Alt-PrtScrn (or Alt-Print Screen).
• To capture the contents of the entire screen, press PrtScrn (or Print Screen) by itself.

In both of these cases, the image is captured to the Windows Clipboard.

To manipulate the image you just saved, you can use a program that comes with Windows called Paint. To load Paint, click the Start button, and go to Programs. Select Accessories, and then choose Paint. To move the captured image into Paint, go to the Edit menu and select Paste. At this point, you can print the image, alter it, or save it as a .BMP file.

Similarly, you can paste this image into any other program that handles images (i.e., WordPerfect, Word, Excel or PhotoShop etc.)