Legacy Tip: Screenshot

If you ever can't find something on the website using the search box, come all the way down to the bottom of the search results, and you'll see a Google search option that we use. Google to search my website and if you search for "screenshot," Alex's tip comes up as the first item. Google is honestly much better at indexing my site than I am; mine usually only looks at the titles of pages. Classic pages like Alex's old tips aren't indexed at all.

You may use an external image app such as IrfanView (named after its creator Irfan, pronounced "EAR faan"), which can capture screenshots with a command line, which you can run with the Shell() function in Access.  That way you can capture the screen with just one line of code:

     Shell """D:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view64.exe"" /capture=0 /convert=""D:\My Pictures\test240423.jpg"""
    
The full list of command line options is under "Help" inside the IrfanView application, which also has a GUI for non-programmers.

Whenever there is a "low code" alternative, I would use it instead of calling Windows library functions, which often involves a ton of code as shown in Alex's method.

I haven't tested this, but I asked GPT if Windows alone could do it, and apparently PowerShell has the ability to capture the screen. Here's the script it gave me, but again, I have not tested this yet, so feel free.

Details

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing

# Define the rectangle coordinates and size (X, Y, Width, Height)
$startX = 100  # X coordinate of the rectangle's top-left corner
$startY = 100  # Y coordinate of the rectangle's top-left corner
$rectWidth = 300  # Width of the rectangle
$rectHeight = 200  # Height of the rectangle

# Create a bitmap of the specified size
$bitmap = New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap $rectWidth, $rectHeight

# Create graphics object from the bitmap
$graphics = [System.Drawing.Graphics]::FromImage($bitmap)

# Define the screen coordinates to start from
$screenPoint = New-Object System.Drawing.Point $startX, $startY

# Capture the specific part of the screen
$graphics.CopyFromScreen($screenPoint, [System.Drawing.Point]::Empty, $rectWidth, $rectHeight)

# Save the screenshot to a file
$bitmap.Save("C:\Path\To\Save\Screenshot.png", [System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat]::Png)

# Dispose of the graphics object and bitmap to free up resources
$graphics.Dispose()
$bitmap.Dispose()

Write-Output "Screenshot of the specified area saved to C:\Path\To\Save\Screenshot.png"

Thank you all.