Maggie's Farm

One of the best new features in Vista (it's also in Windows 7) is the Snipping Tool.  I only started using Vista a month ago, so it took me a while to blunder my way across it.  What a great find.

If you just want a grab a picture from the Web for your own use, you right-click on it and save it.  The problem arises when you just want part of a picture, or part of a web page (or program) that's not a picture.  The traditional method is to hit the 'Print Scrn' key on the keyboard, which puts a snapshot of the entire screen into memory, then paste it into a paint program and do your cropping.  The Snipping Tool eliminates the entire process.

In Vista's Start Menu, the entry is in Programs/Accessories.  In Win7, it'll either be on the main Start Menu list or buried somewhere.  If you don't see the entry, open Control Panel, 'Programs and Features', click on 'Turn Windows features on and off' over to the left, then checkmark the "Tablet PC" entry and let it load.  If it's already checked and you swear you can't find the entry on the Start Menu, uncheck 'Tablet', reboot, then put it back in.  (Why it's tied in with the tablet's features is anybody's guess.)

Update: A commenter noted that the 'Tablet' feature isn't offered in his 'Home' edition, so if you don't see a 'Tablet PC' entry in the 'Features' box, check out the couple of free snipping tools available here.

To use Snipping Tool, just fire it up.  It automatically goes straight into 'capture mode'.  Grab the mouse, hold down the left button and d-r-a-g it over the area you want to snip.  When you let go, a box pops open with the sniplet.  Do a 'Save As' and there ya go.

There are a couple of other features in the sniplet box you might find useful, such as a 'pen' tool where you can manually write words or circle something, and a yellow 'highlight' tool.  If you don't like what you circled or highlighted, click on the 'Eraser' tool and then the area you want erased.  You can also send the snip directly to someone via email without even bothering to save it, another time-saver.

There are a couple of Options you might want to change:

— You can add it to the Quick Launch tool bar if you use it.

— The 'ink' color is the color of the border it puts around the snip, so you might prefer black or some dark color over the default red.

Kudos to Microsoft for an excellent time-saving tool that works perfectly.