Using the Windows Vista Snipping Tool

Windows Vista has an additional small programme that allows you to highlight and copy a selected
part of a programme window, including Web Pages, email messages, photos and pictures, called
the Snipping Tool.

You can start the Snipping Tool by clicking on the:

 START MENU, then choosing

 ALL PROGRAMMES and finally
 ACCESSORIES.

On first use, your computer will ask you if you want to ADD THE SNIPPING TOOL TO YOUR
QUICK LAUNCH TOOLBAR. You can agree to this if you like as it makes it easier to start the
programme from then on.

Once the Snipping Tool starts you should see a small ‘window’ (as below) on your screen:

The window indicates what you need to do to make

use of the snipping tool – i.e. Drag the Cursor
around the area you want to capture.

To select a rectangular area of any window:

 Move the mouse pointer to the start position of the area to be selected
 Click and hold down the Left Mouse Button
 Drag the pointer to the end position of the selection area

A red outline box should appear as you drag the mouse around the selected area of your
programme window. This area will become the saved Picture (or screen capture) from the active
programme window.

When you release the mouse button, the selected area will be shown in the snipping tool window
as below:

This screenshot shows the captured part of a web page. This ‘picture’ can now be saved directly
to the computer, printed out or amended / edited as needed. Because the snipping tool saves the
selected data as .JPEG format, it is just like a digital photo – meaning you can apply changes.
Snipping Tool Main Toolbar and Options
The Toolbar of the Snipping Tool has several buttons along the top that you can use to make
changes to the captured image.

These buttons are shown on the screenshot below:

The first button allows you to START A NEW SELECTION area from an active window – much like
starting a new blank document in a word processor programme.

The second button SAVES the captured image. When you click this button, the captured image is
saved automatically in the PICTURES folder and is given the name CAPTURE. You can change
the name to one that makes more sense if you wish and also change the folder where the captured
image is saved.

The third button allows you to COPY the contents of the snipping tool window so that you can
paste it back into another document or suitable image editing programme. By using this copy &
paste ability, you can build up a bigger picture in a document for example, using lots of small
‘snippings’. These would be pasted into the document as individual pictures, similar to building up
a collage with scraps of paper.

You can use the fourth button to SEND the contents of the snipping tool window by email, to any of
your contacts, either directly in the body text of an email message or as a separate attachment with
the email message.

The last three buttons let you make changes to the snipping window content.

Firstly you can ‘WRITE’ on the picture using the PEN button. This is very handy if you want to add
notes or arrows etc. to the picture before saving or emailing it.

The next button is the HIGHLIGHT option. Using this allows you to make parts of the picture
stand-out –- just as when using a highlighter pen on a printed document. None of the picture itself
is removed or deleted; it’s just shaded round the background with a colour.

Finally, the ERASER button lets you remove various parts of the picture -– as you would rub-out a
pencil drawing –- again before saving, sending or emailing the final picture.

All in all, the snipping tool can be a very useful gadget as you can use it on any open Window on
your computer to save part of the displayed image.

Play around with the Snipping Tool and see what you can do.