Academic Technology Center
Teaching with Technology Collaboratory

Text Capturing with SnagIT 8

Why

There are times when you may want to capture text from a window that can not be copied using the copy or paste functions on your PC. Examples of this would be a list of filenames in a directory or an error message from a program.

Opening SnagIt 8

  1. On a PC with SnagIt 8 installed, click on the Start menu and select All Programs > SnagIt 8 folder> SnagIt 8.
  2. The Snag-It 8 Control Panel will appear on your screen.

Select the Text Capture Profile

  1. From the SnagIt Control Panel, choose the Text from Window capture profile.
  1. Open the window or application you want to capture text from, and make sure it is on top of any other windows on your desktop as SnagIT will capture the first window underneath itself. In this example, a directory listing will be captured to a file with editable text.
  1. Select the Capture button from SnagIt.
  2. A red highlight border will appear, move the border until it is surrounding the area you wish to capture, and then left-click to keep the capture. If you make a mistake, you can right-click or press the ESC key to cancel.
  1. The text you just captured will appear in the SnagIt Preview window.
  1. From this window, there are multiple options for saving or copying the text to a file. Choose Save As to save as a text file (.txt), Copy All to copy to the clipboard, Print to print the listing, or Program to send the text directly to Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word or another word-processing program.

Tip

The text capture feature will only capture what is visible in the window you are looking at. So, for capturing a directory listing, expand or contract the window before capturing to get only the information you need. For example, if only the filenames need to be captured, shrink the window using the resize handle on the lower-right hand side. This will save you time deleting unecessary information.

Related Resources

Maintained by itweb@wpi.edu
Last modified: Jan 30, 2007, 15:19 EST
[WPI] [ATC] [Home] [Back] [Top]

Academic Technology Center - Worcester Polytechnic Institute
100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Phone: +1-508-831-5220 - Fax: +1-508-831-5881 - atc-ttc@wpi.edu