Tech Support 101: How do I capture my screen and email it to support?
Trust me, we get this question a lot. How do I print the screen? Spoiler alert: you press the print screen button, then you paste it (CTRL+V or right-click > Paste) into any application. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work in browsers, yet. Sorry to all those people who use webmail- try using an email client like Thunderbird.
Capturing the Screen is Easy
Just press the Print Screen button.
Or maybe it's Prnt Scrn, PrtScn, or maybe the button is just labeled PRT or PRINT. There is a keyboard button, in the upper right hand corner, usually above the Insert, Delete, Page Up and Page Down keys. This button is somewhere on your keyboard. I'm not sure about Apple, but on Windows it is definitely there... thank you DOS.
Or You Could Get Fancy and Push Alt+Print Screen
This will capture only the active window, not the entire screen. This is good if you want to send a smaller-than-full-width screen shot. All you do is resize the window to a smaller size and then press ALT+Print Screen. When you paste the screen capture, you'll only the window or program that was active . This has come in handy many times for me. Basically, ALT+PRINT is my keyboard shortcut of choice for grabbing a screen capture.
How Do You Access the Image of the Captured Screen?
Again, this is very easy. All you have to do to get access to the captured screen shot is PASTE the image somewhere. It's already in your clipboard. The very nature of pressing the Print Screen button is that you are copying the screen image to the clipboard. It's best to paste the screen capture into an editing program like Adobe Photoshop, or even Microsoft Word or Outlook. It's there.
How do I Paste the Screen Capture?
CTRL+V or right-click and then choose Paste.
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