Capture Window (Alt-Print Screen) of Context Menu

Question

As everyone knows, sometimes developers have to document stuff. Or capture some stuff for filing bug reports.

My question is in MS Windows.

I'm trying to capture the context menu (the popup menu that appears after right-clicking an item) of several areas of an application. Pressing Alt to start the Alt+PrintScreen process closes the context menu.

(Only pressing PrintScreen helps, but it's painful to remove the non-window areas everytime).

BONUS: For capturing menus, Alt also closes the menu. However, if you use the Alt key to open the menu in the first place, it works:

1. Press Alt+F (for opening the "File" menu), don't release Alt
2. Press PrintScreen
3. Tada!

Answer 1

You can't get the menu on its own, but you can get it to capture the parent window + context menu through a similar trick to the one you discovered with the main menu:

1. Press & hold Shift
2. Press F10
3. Press and hold Alt (you're still holding down Shift)
4. Press PrintScreen
5. Release Shift + Alt

At least you don't have to install any software!

Answer 2

Using Windows 7, I used Ctrl and PrntScr at the same time.

That captured the entire screen. I then pasted (Ctrl + V) into an image editor, and cropped out everything except the context menu.

I do have the Windows High Contrast Acccessibility Mode disabled on my computer (Control Panel -> Ease of Access Center -> Make the computer easier to see -> uncheck "Turn on or off High Contrast ..."). I'm not sure if that was necessary or not.

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Note: if your keyboard does not have PrntScr as a primary key (it might show in small blue font), then obviously you'll have to adjust for that (e.g. you may need to press Alt to get the PrntScr function, which means a total key sequence of Ctrl + Alt + PrntScr on your keyboard).