WHAT?

Here’s a neat trick I found on a blog post recently (I’ll try and find the reference) which shows you how to save screenshots you take of anything on the screen as images to use elsewhere (with the possible exception of video…and that’s a whole other blog post for another day).

WHY?

Imagine you are not using your own computer and you come across something you really need to add to your blog or website. Maybe this computer has no image editing software on it or you don’t know the software it does have. What do you do? Take a look and see if it has MS Word or PowerPoint – this trick works with all the versions of both of these programs that I can find.

HOW?

This trick uses Word or PowerPoint as a go-between to convert your screenshot into a graphic file format and here’s a screencast which shows you how:

And here’s the proof:

My Moblog screenshot from MS Word

As long as you have a copy of Word or PowerPoint handy, you can convert screenshots into image files – why not have a go yourself?

UPDATE…

As @phillhowson has pointed out, MS Office isn’t exactly ‘free’.  He also points out that (as you might expect) there’s a built-in app for Apple users which does the same thing – Grab.app which looks mighty fine if you can afford an Apple device – I wish I could.

So here’s an update to keep Mr. Howson happy using Open Office – which is definitely free (but unlikely to be available on the majority of the computers you find yourself using!)