Screenshot: Windows

It is often very valuable to be able to take a "screenshot" of what you are seeing on your computer screen and save that screenshot as an image file. For example, if a computer technician is trying to assist you with your computer either over the phone or via email, you can send the screenshot to that person so that they can "see" exactly what you see on your computer screen.

Here are some instructions on how to take a screenshot if you are using a Windows computer:

1. Hit the Print Screen key. You will probably find the Print Screen key just above the numeric pad or control keys. This will cause the image of your screen to be copied to the system "clipboard" just like when you highlight and copy a chunk of text.

2. Open the Paint program. Paint is a free image editing program that is part of the Windows operating system. You can open Paint by clicking on Start - Programs - Accessories - Paint. If you want to use a different image editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, that is fine. Any image editing program will do.

3. Paste the image into Paint. You can paste the image from the clipboard by hitting Control-V, or by using the Edit - Paste menu inside Paint.

4. Save the file in jpeg format. Now you can save the file in a user-friendly format such as jpeg. This will reduce the size of the file and make it easy to send via email. Just choose File - Save As and give the file a name (don't include any blank spaces in the file name!), and save it in JPEG format. You can now attach the JPEG image file to an email.