I have often written training or instructional manuals in Microsoft Word that required screenshots to illustrate the points as I made them. Taking a screenshot of the full screen was never good enough and meant I had to open another programme such as Paint or Snapshot in order to crop the image first, before pasting it into Word. In Word 2010 there is advanced screenshot functionality making this elaborate and irritating process obsolete.

Open Word and go to the Insert section on the ribbon. In the illustrations section there is a Screenshot button. Click it and the available windows will appear as thumbnails. Essentially you need to have the programme open that you want to take a screenshot from. If there are four programmes running on your machine then four images will be present for selection. Simply clicking on the thumbnail you want will instantly insert it into your Word document.

As suggested, this is rarely good enough and some cropping may be required to get the specific part of the screen that you need. Click the screenshot button and then choose the Screen Clipping option. This will automatically take you the next programme opened after the one you are currently in. If you require a section of Excel for the screen shot then open it after your Word document. The Excel screen will be faded with a small cross as the cursor. Simply click and drag to make your selection for the screen shot. As soon as you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be placed directly into your Word document. The Excel document, (the screen you are taking the image from), will not be affected in any way.

Once you have the screen shot in the document, there is a new section on the ribbon called Picture Tools format. This allows the user to format the screen shot and appears any time the image is selected. There are many picture styles for use. Simply hovering over a picture style will give a preview of how the image will look with that style. The change will not become permanent unless the user clicks on the style to select it.

There are picture borders and affects that can be added. A word of warning here - these effects all look amazing, but always take extra care to use them sensibly and appropriately within a document. Do not add a glowing pink border to an image in an official document. Do not add different colour and shape borders to each picture, but keep them as a consistent design throughout the document in order to look proffessional. This functionality should serve to enhance your document rather than detract from the point it is making.

If it is decided that the image needs further cropping then this can also be completed within Word rather than having to take a new screen shot. Go to the Crop section of the format tools and select crop. This will allow you to crop the current image as required.

Sometimes instead of cropping, it is necessary to remove the background of a picture. This can be done with precision using the remove background functionality. Click the image and select remove background. This will turn the image bright purple which can be a little disconcerting! Do not worry, the image colours are purely to help with this specific process and are not permanent. There are two options; Mark areas to keep and Mark areas to remove. Pick one and begin drawing with the cursor the section you wish to keep or remove.

In the example of mark areas to remove, draw a section you would like to remove from the image. This tool is intuitive rather than exact and you simply need to draw a box around the main section you want rather than an exact portion. The Word tool will automatically pick the section and remove it as it thinks best. Click Keep Changes in the Close group to view the finished result. It may be that further adjustment is required and this particular tool requires a bit of experimentation to fully get it working as your requirements dictate.

Hopefully now that there is a decent screenshot functionality within Word, it will save time having to load up other software packages such as Snapshot or Paint and having to learn how they work to support your Word images.