Leverage PowerPoint To Save Almost Anything As A JPEG

Colleen McHugh at Orations of OMcHodoy contacted me recently with a problem: she needed to take a Word table and save it as an image. Using a simple Print Screen and pasting the screen capture into an imaging software like Microsoft Picture Manager was not an option. So what to do?

Many people don't realize that if you have Microsoft Office you probably have Microsoft PowerPoint[1]. Did you know that you can use PowerPoint to save items as JPEG files? Here's how:

1. Open PowerPoint.


2.  Clear any text boxes or placeholders on the default slide (CTRL + A then DEL).



3.  Open the item you wish to copy.  For this example I am using part of a Word table.  Select the area to be copied, click with the right mouse button and from the Shortcut Menu select Copy.

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4.  Switch to the blank PowerPoint slide.  Click with the right mouse button and select Paste.  The Word table portion appears.

5. On the File menu, select Save As.  In the Save File As Type drop-down list, select JPG (or another graphic format).  Click Save.



6. A prompt to save Every Slide or the Current Slide Only as a graphic file will appear. On our case, since there is only one slide, we can select either option.



7. Locate and open the graphic file.  Crop, edit or reformat as needed.



[1] Not all versions of Microsoft Office comes with the PowerPoint application - it depends on which configuration you purchase.