Persistence Pays Off

Plugging in...

What do you do when someone sends an email with embedded photos that you CANNOT get to copy or save to your own computer? This is how the Tutor managed to snag the mis-behaving PNG (portable network graphic) so it could be used in a client's 2010 holiday card.

All the normal and customary techniques failed, no right clicking, no left clicking, no save, no copy, no nada. So... with the photo in full view on the screen, the Tutor pressed the PrtSc key on the keyboard. It is a key that takes a snapshot of whatever you see on the screen and copies it to the clipboard. Ahhh, but it isn't that simple to get the photo into the proper form for inserting or uploading.

The Tutor's thinking cap came out, and we opened the PowerPoint program. Pasted the snagged copy of the photo from the PrtSc key to the blank slide on the screen. But wait... the picture was only PART of what was copied, there was way too much extraneous stuff like the task bar that shouldn't be in the photo. We clicked once on the photo to select it after we pasted it, then the Picture Toolbar magically appeared on screen, along with the handiest of tools: the crop tool, which is like having a pair of scissors at your disposal.

We placed the crop tool along each edge and dragged it over the areas to remove, which left us with a full copy of the original photo from the email. Not done yet though. The final step was to RIGHT click on the cropped photo, left click on Save as Picture, we gave the picture a name and changed the TYPE to jpg in the box below the file name box.

Voila! Picture was saved onto the computer for using in an email, a website, or anywhere else one can upload photos to for future use (websites, photo sites, facebook, etc).

Though the steps sound complicated, they take little time to execute (for the Tutor anyway).  Before one could say "UNCLE", the photo was extracted from the email. There are other methods to accomplish the same thing, but the Tutor chose to use what the client had on their computer and it worked out just fine. It really pays to think outside the email!

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, and is it turned on?

Unplugged