Using the PRTSC key

Got a nasty error message you want to ask your IT technician about or want to create a reminder or a how to poster then that wonderful PRTSC key is nice and handy.

PrintScreen

PRTSC – what a mouthful! It stands for Print Screen and it takes a handy snapshot of what you are looking at on your computer screen and holds it in the computer’s clipboard. Once it is held in your clipboard you can open up a program like MS Word or MS PowerPoint and use the PASTE command or CTRL V to add the screen snapshot to a page or slide.

What Can I do Next?

After pasting it into a slide I can crop it. Cropping will take out any extra bits you might not need.

After cropping, resizing and moving it around I can add a text box with an explanation or I can highlight part of my picture by adding a shape with transparent fill. I can cover parts of my picture with a filled shape or I can layer several pictures to add to my explanation. I can change just one thing on my screen and do a new PRTSC and add it to the next slide to do a step by step tutorial.

What Else?

One handy tip is to hold down the ALT key and press the PRTSC key and this will put just the window you are looking at into the clipboard. Useful if all you want is an error message – no need to crop.

Some computers will have another screen clipping tool. On computers using MS Windows Vista or 7 there is a program called Snipping Tool.

If you are using the snipping tool or PrintScreen to copy images from the internet you will still need to acknowledge the source of your image by copying the web address and adding to your work.

4 thoughts on “Using the PRTSC key

  1. Miss W. January 20, 2011 / 9:21 pm

    Tracey,
    Here is the post I use with my students – I don’t know how to crop and resize in MSPaint so save as JPEG there then do the editing in another program.

    • Mrs S January 20, 2011 / 9:35 pm

      Thanks for the link, Sue. I am sure I will refer back to it.

      Using the snipping tool is good for avatars, too because you can hold the window key and tap the s key to get it started when you have created an image on an online site and simply outline the area on the screen that you want to keep.

      When I use the snipping tool this way the snipped image gets transfered into MS OneNote and from there I can right click on it and use the SAVE AS option to save the image. In this instance it gets saved as a PNG image. I just tested opening the PNG image in MS Picture Manager and I was able to open it and crop it. Wow, I had never thought of trying that before.

  2. Mrs S January 20, 2011 / 12:07 pm

    Having just read Kick Start Activity 4 – Beginners I have another What Else:

    PrintScreen is very handy when creating Avatars as you can use so many different sites and not all of them have the ability to save your creations.

    Thanks again, Teacher Challenge creators.

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