Capture Window (Alt-Print Screen) of Context Menu

moogs picture moogs · Oct 28, 2008 · Viewed 45.3k times · Source

As everyone knows, sometimes developers have to document stuff. Or capture some stuff for filing bug reports.

My question is in MS Windows.

I'm trying to capture the context menu (the popup menu that appears after right-clicking an item) of several areas of an application. Pressing Alt to start the Alt+PrintScreen process closes the context menu.

(Only pressing PrintScreen helps, but it's painful to remove the non-window areas everytime).

BONUS: For capturing menus, Alt also closes the menu. However, if you use the Alt key to open the menu in the first place, it works:

  1. Press Alt+F (for opening the "File" menu), don't release Alt
  2. Press PrintScreen
  3. Tada!

Answer

MrZebra picture MrZebra · Oct 28, 2008

You can't get the menu on its own, but you can get it to capture the parent window + context menu through a similar trick to the one you discovered with the main menu:

  1. Press & hold Shift
  2. Press F10
  3. Press and hold Alt (you're still holding down Shift)
  4. Press PrintScreen
  5. Release Shift + Alt

At least you don't have to install any software!