Screen capture of drop-downs and highlights

By now I hope everyone knows about the very handy Snipping Tool that is provided with Windows. However, you have probably, like myself, been frustrated with the tool when trying to capture the contents of a drop-down menu or some other item that changes its display when it loses focus (like a highlighted row in Excel).

I know there are alternatives to the Snipping Tool available that can do this, and, admittedly, many of them have some great additional features, but, as it turns out, there is a way to do it without needing any additional software.

This post details how to capture those elusive transitory displays. In short, the procedure is:

• Select New in the Snipping Tool (screen goes gray).
• Press esc (screen returns to normal).
• Switch to the application you wish to capture and open the drop-down (or select the row, or whatever).
• Press ctl-PrtScn (screen goes gray again).
• Now highlight the area to capture and Snipping Tool will do its thing.

Hope that comes in handy.