How to Take Screenshots on Windows 7: A Step-by-Step Guide

Sometimes you may need to save and store specific text, information, and specification. In this case, you usually take notes from them. At this point, the best way is to take a screenshot of that specific information instead of taking notes and wasting your time. Now, you may ask how to take screenshots on Windows 7. Read the following content to learn more.

3 Methods to Take Screenshots on Windows 7

Snipping Tool

You can find Snipping Tool in Windows Vista and further. This app allows you to customize, edit, and save your screenshot to your hard drive. To find out how to take a screenshot with Snipping Tool, walk through the steps below:

1. Press the Windows key from your keyboard.
2. Type Snipping Tool in the Windows search box. Or instead, you can hold Windows + S hotkey to open the Windows search bar directly.
3. Hit the Enter button.
4. Then, the Snipping Tool window will pop up.
5. There, to start capturing your display, you need to select the New button. If you want to choose the capturing mode, you can click on the arrow close to the New option. There are options such as Free-form Snip, Rectangular Snip, and Window Snip.
6. Once you have clicked on the New button, your screen will dim, and you can select your desired part of the screen by clicking and dragging.
7. Now, you have various options to edit your screenshots, such as pen, eraser, and highlighter.

Here is a table of some shortcuts that work after you open the Snipping Tool window.

To take a screenshot from a specific menu, follow the steps below:

1. Press the Windows key from your keyboard.
2. Type Snipping Tool in the Windows search box. Or instead, you can hold Windows + S hotkey to open the Windows search bar directly.
3. Press the Esc key.
4. Now, open the menu that you want to capture.
5. Hold Ctrl + PrtSc hotkey.
6. Click on the arrow close to the New option and select your desired capture mode.
7. Take a screenshot of the menu.

To print your screenshot, walk through the steps below:

1. Open the file from where you have saved your image.
2. To open the print dialog box, hit the Print button. Then, select your printer.
3. For long-term storage, you can save your image to H: drive.

Print Screen Key

This method works on every version of Windows, including Windows XP and Windows 95. There is a key in the name of Print Screen, PrtSc, and PrtScn. It varies depending on your keyboard type and country. When you use this method, the operating system will take a screenshot from the whole screen and save it to your clipboard. Then, you can paste it into the email to share your image. Also, you can edit the screenshot by pasting it into an image editing software like Photoshop or Paint.

This method has a disadvantage which is that when you take a screenshot, it will capture the whole screen, including the toolbar, and tab bar of the screen.

To save and share your screenshot, which has taken via the PrtSc button on your keyboard, follow the steps below:

To save and share your screenshot taken by the PrtSc button, you can paste it into any software that allows you to insert an image, like Paint and Word.

1. Open Paint from the Start menu.
2.  Once the Paint window pops up, hold the Ctrl + V hotkey to paste your screenshot. Instead, you can also right-click and select the Paste option from the drop-down menu.
3. Here, you can use Paint tools to edit your screenshot.

Also, you can directly paste your screenshot into your email or any other messenger to share it with other people.

Take Screenshot from Tabs and Entire Web Pages in Google Chrome

Google Chrome does not have a built-in screenshot tool, but you can get an extension to do that.

Follow the steps below to get a screenshot extension.

1. Open Chrome Web Store.
2. Type screenshot in the search box.
3. Select your favorite screenshot extension from the result. Here are some good extensions that we recommend: Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder, Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder, and LightShot (static screenshots only).

All of the above extensions do much more than Snipping Tool. You can capture a screenshot from the whole page instead of a visible part only. To do this, you can hold the Ctrl + Shift + E hotkey in Awesome Screenshot.

Look at the picture below. With these extensions, you can have a full screenshot from the homepage of your website.

These extensions also allow you to capture a screenshot from a specific tab. With this action, you do not have to crop out your image. Hold Ctrl + Shift + V hotkey in Awesome Screenshot to use this feature. Besides these features, Awesome Screenshot and other extensions have better editing tools, such as blurring some parts of the image, adding text, arrows, shapes, text boxes, and so on. Fortunately, all of these amazing features are available in the free version.

Final Thoughts

To capture a screenshot from particular information or page in Windows 7, you have various ways to do so, like the built-in keyboard key, the built-in Windows tools, or the Extensions in Chrome. Hopefully, by reading this content, you are able to capture screenshots in any way that prefer. Do you know any other methods for screen capturing in Windows 7? Share your ideas with us.