Microsoft KB Archive/240653

= How To Copy the Screen or Active Window to the Clipboard from Visual Basic =

Article ID: 240653

Article Last Modified on 6/29/2004

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition

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This article was previously published under Q240653



SUMMARY
This article demonstrates how to programmatically copy the active window or the whole screen to the clipboard and print the image.



MORE INFORMATION
The code included in Knowledge Base article:

161299 How To Capture and Print the Screen, a Form, or any Window

shows how to capture any form or window, including the screen, and place it in a Visual Basic Picture object. If the only requirement is to copy the active window or screen to the clipboard, the keybd_event API is a much easier and lower overhead approach. Calling the keybd_event API achieves the same functionality as entering the key combinations PRINTSCRN (copy the screen to the clipboard) or ALT+PRINTSCRN (copy the active window to the clipboard). If you also need to print the image, a hidden PictureBox can provide this functionality.

Step-by-step Example
 Start a new Visual Basic Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default. Add three CommandButtons and a PictureBox to Form1.  Add the following code into the General Declarations section of Form1: Option Explicit

Private Declare Sub keybd_event Lib "user32" (ByVal bVk As Byte, ByVal _  bScan As Byte, ByVal dwFlags As Long, ByVal dwExtraInfo As Long)

Private Declare Function GetVersionExA Lib "kernel32" _ (lpVersionInformation As OSVERSIONINFO) As Integer

Private Type OSVERSIONINFO dwOSVersionInfoSize As Long dwMajorVersion As Long dwMinorVersion As Long dwBuildNumber As Long dwPlatformId As Long szCSDVersion As String * 128 End Type

Private Const KEYEVENTF_KEYUP = &H2 Private Const VK_SNAPSHOT = &H2C Private Const VK_MENU = &H12

Dim blnAboveVer4 As Boolean

Private Sub Command1_Click If blnAboveVer4 Then keybd_event VK_SNAPSHOT, 0, 0, 0 Else keybd_event VK_SNAPSHOT, 1, 0, 0 End If End Sub

Private Sub Command2_Click If blnAboveVer4 Then keybd_event VK_SNAPSHOT, 1, 0, 0 Else keybd_event VK_MENU, 0, 0, 0 keybd_event VK_SNAPSHOT, 0, 0, 0 keybd_event VK_SNAPSHOT, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0 keybd_event VK_MENU, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0 End If End Sub

Private Sub Command3_Click ' Load the captured image into a PictureBox and print it   Picture1.Picture = Clipboard.GetData Printer.PaintPicture Picture1.Picture, 0, 0 Printer.EndDoc End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load Dim osinfo As OSVERSIONINFO Dim retvalue As Integer osinfo.dwOSVersionInfoSize = 148 osinfo.szCSDVersion = Space$(128) retvalue = GetVersionExA(osinfo) If osinfo.dwMajorVersion > 4 Then blnAboveVer4 = True

Picture1.Visible = False Command1.Caption = "Print Screen" Command2.Caption = "Alt+Print Screen" Command3.Caption = "Print Image" End Sub  Open Microsoft Paint, and then run the project. Click the Print Screen button, switch to Paint, and press CTRL+V to paste the contents of the clipboard into Paint. The entire screen is pasted. Click the Alt+Print Screen button, switch to Paint as before, and press CTRL+V again. Only the active window is pasted. Click the Print Image button and the captured image will print (using a hidden PictureBox).</li></ol>

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