You want to take a screenshot of something and not have to fix it when you’re finished.

Screenshots can be tricky if the window, dialog box, or application floats over the main screen. Instead of taking a screenshots of the entire window, you can automatically take only the most active window.

Here’s my favorite trick when taking Print Screens. Some people call these screenshots or screen dumps.

Tip: The print screen button (PrintScrn) is next to F12 on your keyboard.

1. To take a screenshot, press PrintScrn.

2. Open Word and Paste (Edit, Paste) the screenshot into your document.

This is fine if you’re capturing the entire screen.

But what do happens if you’re using an application, such as SAP, with multiple floating screens?

You don’t want to capture all these screens floating over each other. It looks terrible and too much work to fix in Paint.

So, how do you capture the active ‘floating’ screen only? Is there a quick way to avoid editing the entire screen?

Here’s the trick!

Hold down ALT and then press PrintScrn.

This captures the active screen only. This trick can save you many hours editing and tidying up images.

Related posts:

1. How To take Screenshots of Floating Windows
2. Using Paint to take Great Screenshots
3. Using Paint to take Great Screenshots

What do you want to see in Microsoft Office 2010? Arpan Shan, who has access to the beta versions at Microsoft, shares his favorite 10 Office 2010 features.

Some of these you may already know, but he highlights some nice ideas that seem to be coming through. In Word 2010, for example, you will have an in-built screen capture tool that takes screen shots of whatever apps you have open. Interesting to see how Techsmith, the makers of Snagit, will respond to this.

Also, Scott Stiles, the head of the Program Management team for Word, describes the aims and objectives that Microsoft has for this new release.

Top 10 Office 2010 Tech Preview Features

1. Office Web Applications

He says that “the other advantage of Office Web Applications over a service like Google Docs/Spreadsheets is that not only will consumers be able to use this on Windows Live, but Enterprises can deploy Office Web Applications on their own SharePoint servers”.

Nice for corp users but doesn’t really help the little people.

2. Screen clippings

Here you can insert screenshots of applications that you open right from within Office. This saves you having to use Snagit or other screenshot applications. Not sure if you can crop or edit the screenshot. But if you just want a basic screenshot app, this will be useful.

3. Image Background Removal

He adds that previously he had to use other applications to make the background transparent but can now do this within applications like PowerPoint 2010.

4. Outlook User Experience

There are many UX enhancements in Outlook 2010. For example, when you receive meeting requests, you can see your other scheduled appointments inline.

You also have tips throughout Outlook 2010 that tell you if you’re above your quota, you’re going to send an email outside your organization, etc.

5. Video editing

In PowerPoint 2010, you can now insert and edit video. Not only can videos be inserted, but they can be modified. You can trim the video, set the image cover for the video, add borders, add other effects like reflection as well as other special effects.

PPTX files will increase in size (dramatically, I assume) when you add images and videos.

After trimming the video correctly in PowerPoint 2010, you can compress the media size to improve performance and reduce the size of the file.

6. PowerPoint Broadcasting

PowerPoint 2010 has a new broadcasting feature that lets you share PPT presentation.

You can either use a public “PowerPoint Broadcast Service” (you need a Live ID and it’s free) or an internal SharePoint server.

This lets you email a URL to a group of people and they can watch you deliver your PPTX from their browser.

7. PowerPoint Transitions

Some stylish new transitions are on the way. Let’s wait and see.

8. Copy/Paste

In current versions of Microsoft Office, you often end up using paste, look, undo, paste special, etc.

In Office 2010, there’s copy and paste live preview.

This lets you preview how different paste options will look without having to undo, paste, undo paste.

9. SharePoint Workspace

SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove) lets you work with SharePoint content.

You can take SharePoint lists & libraries offline, provide a rich client UX and background syncing with SharePoint which helps with performance especially in low latency situations.

10. Sparklines

Excel 2010 introduces Sparklines.

This lets you show data trends in a one data cell.

It’s very useful when you’re analyzing numbers over time across a number of time periods. There are many forms sparklines can take from lines to columns to more yes/no type options for win/loss data.

Screenshots and more examples on his MSDN blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/my-top-office-2010-features.aspx

What do you think?

Of all the features here, the two that interests me the most are the screenshots and the copy/paste options.

Why?

Well, because these are two activities that I do all day. Some of the others, like video editing in PowerPoint don’t interest me – I‘ll use  Techsmith Camtasia instead anyway.

But, improved screenshot capabilities would make a huge difference, especially if I can work on the screenshots, maybe add arrows and explanatory text.

How about you? What do you REALLY want to see in Microsoft Office 2010!

Related posts:

1. Tracking Business Processes from within MS Office
2. Office 2003 to 2007 User Interface Guides
3. How to Recover a Lost File in Word 2007 or Word 2003

How do you convert 100 images to same file format, add a 1 pixel black border, and make them all the same size?

I used to use Adobe Photoshop to batch process photos but have now moved to Snagit.

One of the hidden features in Snagit is its Batch Conversion Wizard. This lets you convert your images in a batch. Even better is that you can modify all the images on the fly, for example, give all the images a black border or converting them to the same file format.

This saves an immense amount of time ensures that all your images are the same size, format and whatever settings you want.

Snagit Batch Process Wizard

You can apply SnagIt’s image editing filters to multiple captures in batch processing mode. You can also convert one or more graphic image files from one format to another.

For example, you might want to convert low-res BMP files into PNG and store them in another directory for your website.

The SnagIt Catalog Browser processes the file conversions and saves them to the Output directory you want.  Any filters you applied appear in the Conversion Filters box.

The files are individually converted to the selected format and stored in the folder you select.

NOTE: The original files are not changed. Snagit creates new files for each batch process.

How to Batch Process Images

You can batch process the images are follows:

Step 1. Select Files

1. In Windows Explorer, select the files you want to process.

2. Right-click on the files.

Tip: hold down CTRL and click on individual files if you don’t want all the images in the folder.

3. Select Snagit and Batch Convert Images.

Note: you can also use the Catalog Browser in Snagit. Open it and then use Edit, Select All to select all files or hold CTRL and select individual files.

Step 2. Conversion Filters

In step 2, you can use the conversion filters to do this such as:

• Modify the Color Depth
• Substitute Colors
• Change the Image Resolution
• Rescale the Image
• Add a Caption, for example, a notice or warning message
• Add a Border and select the size, color and other special effects
• Add a Watermark, for example, DRAFT, or the name of your website or business
• Trim the image, so that it’s more uniform

For example, in the screenshot, you can see that we added a white background, drop shadow and positioned it towards the lower right.

In this example, you can see that we added the www.Klariti.com logo to the lower left corner of the box shot.

And this is what the finished box shot looks like. You can add your own company logo to screenshots in the same way.

Once you have finished with the conversion filters, click Next.

Step 3. Output Options

Here you setup the output options:

1. In the Output directory, select a folder where you want to save the files.

2. In the File Format dropdown list, select a file format, for example PNG or JPG.

All files will be converted to the same format.

3. In File name:

Use the default Windows file name or create your own naming conventions.

Note: I have found the Automatic file name to be a bit problematic. You might need to experiment here until you get it right.

Click Next.

Step 4. Ready for the Conversion Process

Check that you’re happy with the settings. Go back and change if needs be.

Click Finish.

The conversion process starts.

When the conversion is complete, the converted images will be displayed in the output folder you selected and the Catalog Browser.

The images will be converted to format you selected, filters will be applied, and the new images will be saved to the folder you selected.

Summary

If you know better ways to convert images and run batch processes, please let me know. I used to use Photoshop but found it didn’t have the range of effects that Snagit has.

Is there another screenshot product that does a better job?

Related posts:

1. 5 Things to do if Microsoft Word won’t Print your Images
2. Using Paint to Convert Images into JPG, TIFF and PNGs
3. 5 Things to do if Word won’t print your images