How to Capture the Screen Shot of an Active Window

When you get those annoying pop-up error messages, you may find you can't replicate them. This makes it very difficult to report these messages—quite often when trying to repeat the message, you can't capture the error as it originally occurred. Capture the message by taking a screen shot of the active window.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Note which object in the active window that you want to capture. Depress the "Print Scr" button on your keyboard. Locate this key on the very top of the keyboard beside the "F12" key. Nothing appears to happen, but don't worry--you captured the screen shot.

2. Open up a graphics program such as Microsoft Paint or Microsoft Word. You can't paste your screen shot into text document programs such as Notepad and Microsoft WordPad.

3. Paste the screen shot to the blank document or page that opens in your program by pressing "Ctrl" and the letter "V" simultaneously. You can now see the screen shot of your window with the error message clearly in view.

4. Edit the screen shot if you want. Or, just send the entire window to the help desk. Take several screen shots, if necessary, by repeating the above steps.

5. Use this process to capture a screen shot of your active window whenever you need to save or reproduce information from your current computer session.

Tips & Warnings

• After you press the "Print Scr" key, you have copied the screen to your print editor in your computer. Open your graphics program immediately, and paste the screen into a new blank document. If you copy any other information before doing this, you lose the screen shot.

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Resources

• Get Microsoft Word tips at the Microsoft website.