History and Theory

One of the neatest, yet least understood, functions in Windows is the PrintScrn button (aka: Print Screen or PRNTSCRN, depending upon your keyboard). Originally (back in the Olden Times (circa 5 bw [before Windows]), in the days of command line interfaces, operators and technicians were often faced with long, convoluted text statements which appeared on their screen and contained information concerning resource utilization, application, machine configuration, etc. While this same information is still essential today, Windows eliminates most of the need for us (as users) to get our hands dirty with that type of stuff. When it is needed, it pops up in a text editing program such as Notepad, and if we need to print a copy, we just print it.

Well, DOS wasn't that friendly. If you wanted to work with a text file, DOS included a function called EDLIN (My apologies to those of you who have actually used EDLIN and feel that it should really be a four letter word, not suitable for use in polite company.). There were several "text editors" that could make your life easier, but, all in all, it wasn't nearly as convenient as we have it now. Anyway, enter the PrintScrn key. It was very handy to be able to simply press a key and have the contents of the monitor screen print out on a printer. Remember, this was pre-Windows, pre-photo-like graphics. Press the button; there's your file printout. All text, no graphics as we know them today, still, a lot better than having to write everything down. Enter Windows.

Windows gives us the ability to view photo-like graphics. Cool. Most cool. No, I won't tell you what I've got as my wallpaper on my machine at home. One of the basic precepts of Windows is multi-tasking and being able to easily export information from one application into another. Enter the clipboard. OK, OK already!! Before someone else says it, Mac had it first. Microsoft was smart enough to let Apple do all the research and development, work all the bugs out, etc., then borrow it from them. The clipboard is a temporary storage area where you can put digital information. The accent here is on digital. The information is digital (0's and 1's), it isn't in any special format or form, and can be used by most applications. You can take information from the clipboard and place it into other programs, an operation called pasting. You can paste only one copy into one program, or multiple copies of the data into different programs, depending on your needs. However, the clipboard has a couple of drawbacks.

It's like my 93 year old Aunt Mable. Every night when she goes to sleep, the power to the brain shuts off. When she gets up in the morning, we have to reload her. The clipboard's the same way. The clipboard is actually an area in RAM (Random Access Memory, aka "memory"). RAM is where the data currently being used (or recently used) is being held. It's called 'dynamic memory' because it's constantly under power and constantly changing, depending upon the demands from the Central Processing Unit (or CPU chip). RAM is also as useless as me on a hundred meter relay team when you don't have power to it. Shut the power off, and everything that was in memory goes bye-bye. Since the clipboard is part of RAM, if you shut the power off, the information on the clipboard vanishes.

Drawback number two is that current editions of Windows don't allow you to put more than one thing onto the clipboard at once. If you've got something on the clipboard and then put something else there, the newest addition replaces the earlier information. So what's all this got to do with PrintScrn?

PrintScrn gives us a convenient way to capture an image of either the entire monitor or just the active window. That's right, an image. A picture, if you will. When you press the PrintScrn key, you don't actually see anything happen (except perhaps a quick flicker on the monitor), but Windows has placed a copy of the monitor's image on the clipboard. However, let's say you're not running the current application window fully maximized because you want to see part of another application or the desktop. If you press and hold the ALT key, then tap the PrintScrn key, you capture just the window that's currently active (the one you're working in). OK, review time. PrintScrn key captures the entire monitor image. ALT+PrintScrn captures just the active window. Remember that.

To use information currently on the clipboard is simplicity itself. Just put the insertion point where you want the information to go, then either: A) press CTRL+V, B) click on the button in the destination application toolbar that looks like a clipboard, or C) if the application allows it, select Edit->Paste from the menu bar. Bingo!! There it is. No muss, no fuss. Normally.

OK, so here's how you copy an image of either the entire desktop or just the active window to the clipboard, then into a word processor:

1. Using the control boxes in the top right corner of your application window, size and position the application screen until it looks like you want it to.  If copying only the active window, use the scroll handles to position the information you wish to see in the window.  Remember, you're transferring an image of the screen, not the screen itself, therefore, once you've copied it to the clipboard, nothing works in the image any more.
2. Once you have the image to be transferred the way you want it, press Printscreen to copy the entire desktop onto the clipboard, or use Alt+Printscreen to transfer just the active window.
3. Return to the document into which you wish to paste the image and position the insertion point where you want the image to appear int he document.
4. Using whatever method you prefer (Ctrl+V is a good one, so is Edit-->Paste), paste the image into your document.
5. Note that the image still has a very fine outline and a series of boxes called "sizing handles" (more later) around the outside edges.  That means that the image is still selected, and we can work with it.
6. Carefully place the mouse pointer on one of the corners of the image until the pointer turns into a diagonal arrow, then click-n-drag the image to size it.  Note that in many programs, any portion of the image left outside the document margins will not print.

It's important to realize that the information you've just pasted into, say Wordpad, is actually an object. It's like a photo you work on with an image program. As long as it's in your computer, you can change it, manipulate it, do almost anything you want to it. Once you save it and print it, however, the resulting printout is an object. You can trim it, cut it to size, or glue it onto a poster, but you can't actually change the content of the printout itself. Graphic information pasted from the clipboard is the same way. It's an object. You can tell that it's an object, because when you click on it, the entire graphic is selected. When selected, the object is surrounded by a dotted line or border with eight boxes on it, one in each corner and one in the middle of each side. These are called "sizing handles", and are used to change the size of the object. Depending on the destination application, objects can be positioned on a page using click-and-drag. Incidentally, to get rid of an object, select it and press the DELETE key. (Note that text information copied from the clipboard is usually not pasted as an object, but as text, and can be edited and manipulated by the destination program just as you would regular text.)

Two major problems sometimes occur if you haven't worked with objects before. First, you'll paste an object from the clipboard into a document, and the pasted object is much too large. The easy way around this is to scroll about until you find one of the corner sizing handles. You'll know you're in the right place because when you put the mouse pointer over the handle, the pointer will go from whatever it currently is to a two sided diagonal arrow. When it turns to an arrow, click and hold the left mouse button, then drag the mouse toward the opposite corner. When you've decreased the size of the object down to where you want it, release the mouse button. You might want to be a little careful here. Some applications automatically keep the height and width proportional (called maintaining the aspect ratio), while others let you independently control both the height and width of the object from a corner sizing handle. If you're not careful, you can distort an object by making it either too wide or too narrow, much like the mirrors in the "House of Mirrors" at a carnival.

The second thing that sometimes happens is that we get confused. The object in your document will look exactly like what you were working on just a few moments before when you were into the source application (Paint or whatever). You notice something that needs to be changed, try to change it, and nothing happens. That's because the object is just a copy of a screen, not the active screen itself. There's a way to make it active, called Object Linking and Embedding (OLE).  For now, realize that you can't normally edit the contents of an object pasted from the clipboard, but must return to the original application that contains the object, edit it there, then re-copy it to the clipboard and re-paste it into the destination application. Once a file has been saved with a pasted object in it, the object becomes an adopted part of the file and is treated like a true member of the family.

Well, that's about it for the basics. Like cut-n-paste, it takes thirty minutes to learn to do a three second task. You'll be working with pasted objects so much that it will become second nature to you, and in no time at all, you'll be sizing, relocating and all that good stuff without even thinking about it. It's a handy skill. Master it.