How-To

How to Take a Screenshot in Office and Insert It into a Document

By Brian Burgess

Updated September 3, 2021

If you’re composing a document in Word or PowerPoint presentation, you might come across an image you’d like to quickly insert. Here’s how to insert a shot.

If you’re composing a document in Word or PowerPoint presentation, you might find an image you’d like to insert quickly. There are third-party tools like SnagIt that will let you do it, but you might not be aware of the screenshot utility built into Office. Here’s a look at how to use it.

Take and Insert a Screenshot in an Office Document

While composing your document and ready to take a shot, go to Insert on the ribbon and click the Screenshot button in the Illustrations section.

That gives you two options which are available windows that are open (not minimized) that you can choose. Or, select Screen Clipping so you can grab a specific screenshot you want. Do note that you can’t take a shot of the application that you’re using to take the shot, though.

If you select Screen Clipping, it works like the Snipping Tool, a utility built into previous versions of Windows. The screen grays out, and you can drag the cursor to select the area of your screen you want to capture. Then the screenshot will automatically be placed into the document you’re creating.

If you need to edit the image further, you can use the editing tools included in the Office app.

This is a great solution if you need to pop in a screenshot into a document quickly without the need to use a separate third-party utility. It’s also worth noting that you can use this option if you’re using Microsoft Word to create and publish blog posts.

You can also use it in the other apps included in the Office Suite like Excel and PowerPoint.