Printing Unprintable Pages

So you read a neat article or story some where and want to print it off to share with others or save or something. But when you go to print, the text doesn't show up on the page or hangs off funny or some other weird thing that prevents you from having a print off.

Well, I don't like being thwarted by a mindless collection of sand and metal. Computer... there are ways of making you print!

Method 1:
Copy and Paste
Nearly every program has the commands Copy and Paste. One method to access them is to select the text and press Ctrl-C (Ctrl plus the C keys). So to copy text from a page that doesn't print, select the text with your mouse as you would highlight text in any other document, then hit Ctrl-C. Then, open up MSWord and press Ctrl-V. Ctrl-V is the paste code.

Okay, what? C is for copy, but V is for paste! Actually, it's not random. X is cut, C is copy and V is paste. The three keys are in a row on the keyboard. And Z, if you recall, is Undo.

Now that you've copied the text and pasted it into MSWord, you can fiddle with formatting and print it. I suggest making sure you have the source in case you ever want to go back to the original document.

Method 2:
Screen shots
Some pages don't allow copying from the browser. They're trying to control access to their page. Fair enough, as sometimes people will lift content and pass it off as their own. But say you need to print a page because your Luddite of a boss doesn't visit the link you sent him. A screen shot will capture what you see on your screen.

Navigate to the page you want to capture. Then press the Print Screen button. You won't see anything happen, but buried deep in the wires and capacitors fo your computer, the machine has taken a picture of the screen at that exact moment you pressed the Print Screen button.

Now, open MSWord or Paint. Either progam will work. Pain will save it as apicture and Word will save it as a document. It depends on how you want the picture. Then, his Ctrl-V to paste the screen shot into the open program. This is how I get all those handy screen shots of my comptuer to show you how things are done. It's also a way to preserve things that can't be printed, such as locked webpages or the Internet History files.

Google It

Everyone Googles. But not everyone Googles well. It's kind of like dancing. Some people shouldn't dance in public, but we all groove from time to time. I have my own special "clean space" dance, reserved for those infrequent times when clutter accepts its eviction notice.

The best tip I have for Google, is to type in exactly what you are looking for.

For example, looking for that song you heard on the supermarket radio? (Earworms, all of them...)
But you only remember a single line?

Try thi: type in that one line, plus the word lyrics.
For example: how to save a life lyrics

Once you have the lyrics, you can get the song title. So, in my example, "How to Save a Life" happens to be not just the words in the refrain, but the title of the song. With that, I also know that the group that sings the song is The Fray.

And with that, just to confirm , I can Google "How to Save a Life" The Fray and get the YouTube videos. After listening to the YouTube Video, I can confirm that it is the song, and perhaps go buy it from iTunes.

This also works with movie quotes, lines from a poem, and other things. Type in the line you remember. If perchance you remember incorrectly or misheard something (also called an eggcorn) try taking out the parts you're not sure of. See what happens.

Similarly, if you're looking for how to reattach the zipper that lovely, wonderful husband pulled off, I might search for "Repair Zipper How-to" or "How to replace zipper." (No quotes.) For some strange reason I do, um, Google as Yoda talks.

When you Google, ask yourself what is it, exactly, you are trying to find. Only if that fails, then get a bigger net and try broader terms. Just know that for certain types of people, Google can be addictive. It's like a freaking drug, man. My next cell phone will have internet just so I can Google things when away from my computer. Need my fix, man. Need my Google.