Using a Screen Shot

Last Updated: January 10, 2007

Screen shots are often useful in a Power Point presentation. They are obtained by tapping the Print Screen Key (in the upper right part of the keyboard) which puts a picture of the current screen on the clipboard. It can then be pasted into any graphical program including Power Point.

Usually you will not wish to have the entire screen visible for the presentation, for example the task bar etc. are not often of interest. Also the part of the screen that you wish to show is often too small for the audience to see. To focus on what you wish the audience to see there are several things you can do.

The cropping tool works for any graphic in Power Point.

• Crop the "picture"
• Enlarge the "picture"

To crop the picture:

1. Select the graphic from which you wish to extract a smaller part.
2. Make sure the drawing tool bar is visible. If not:
   1. On the menu line click on View>Toolbars
   2. Click on Drawing
3. Click on the crop tool ()
4. The image is now surrounded by lines as seen below.

5. Place the mouse pointer on one of the black lines. It will change to a "T". Drag inward. If you go too far you can always drag back.
6. Place the mouse pointer on as many sides as needed to crop to the "picture" you need. Continue until only what you want the audience to focus on is visible.
7. Click outside the graphic which changes the selection items to the usual dots. (Sometimes the crop bars change back to the regular selected dots because of an inadvertent click somewhere. If this happens just reclick the crop tool with the graphic selected.)
8. Enlarge as needed.

Note: The file size of the graphic remains what it was BEFORE the picture was cropped. Thus you can always "uncrop." If you are planning on using the slides on the Web it will be better if you use a tool that reduces the file size of the picture such as Paint that is part of the accessories in Windows. With that tool, you select the tool that looks like a dotted box, draw it around the part of the picture that you want, copy it, click on New, and paste it into the new window. Then save it.

1. To enlarge the picture
2. Select the picture
3. Place the mouse pointer on a corner (If you use a side the picture will be distorted.) The shape will become a double arrow.
4. Drag to the appropriate size.

Note: The picture may become grainy if the resolution is not high enough to allow resizing.

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Copyright 2003/2008 Linda Q. Thede
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