How to Use Screenshots to Your Gain

The ability to take a screenshot is built into almost every computer sold today. It has been part of personal computing for decades. Ask someone on the street how to capture their screen, though, and a surprising number will not know where to start. The good news is that the basic skill usually takes only a few keys.

A feature almost everyone has

Once you know the shortcut, you can begin to use screenshots to your gain. The first benefit is simple: you can capture exactly what is on your screen. That helps when a website shows a picture, map, or receipt that cannot be downloaded or saved in the usual way.

What a screenshot can hold

A screenshot can also preserve a chat conversation or a comment that you may need to refer to later. It can record the way a website looked on a particular day. Those small records are useful when a page changes, when a conversation disappears, or when you need to show someone what you saw.

The skill is easy to learn and hard to outgrow. A few seconds at the keyboard can save an hour of searching later.