1881 census on Scotland's People site .....

[Dz]

This is more of a technical question. Does anyone know how to save 1881 census images or how to copy / paste ? When I have a census image open - there is only a print button option. Cannot seem to be able to highlight and copy the text either.

Actually the 1881 census 'images' on SP are not images at all. Instead, they are 'tables' made up on-the-fly, containing a mix of many small GIF images (column headings, dividers, and the like) along with text names, ages, occupations, etc.

The only way to convert this mixture into an image is to copy a "screen shot" to your clipboard ("ALT-PRINTSCREEN" in Windows) - after, of course, ensuring that all of the the census psuedo-image information is visible.

THEN, you paste this screen shot into your favorite image-editing program, where you can "crop" out the orange SP headers and other junk.

Assuming you don't already possess such an image-editing program, one of the best (FREE for personal use, fast, small in size, and does not require 'installation' into windows) is an older version of LView Pro, such as that found at
http://palmia.org/lview.exe - just save it to a new directory/folder of its own (so you won't lose it among the hundreds of files where the windows default will place it) - and run the 343k self-extracting zip file.

Run the extracted LView executable program and open a blank "FILE/NEW" image of 800x600 size. "EDIT/PASTE" the clipboard contents into the image, then crop it down to size and save it as a GIF or something. (LView will even let you change the number of colors down to two: black-and-white, making the file size very small.)

It doesn't take more than a few seconds to accomplish; here's an example of a screen shot cropped by Lview and saved as a 256-color GIF:



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[Malcolm]

Heather
I don't know why it didn't work for you as you should be able to transfer anything shown on your screen to another document in the way that i described. However, Dweezild's advice looks good although i don't really understand it all myself.
I hope it works but if you have further dificulty i have another suggestion. When you have the document you want to reproduce, minimise it until you go off line. Bring the document back into view and carry out the steps i described. For added fun, drag your mouse over the specific text you want to keep whilst depressing the left hand button. This step replaces Ctrl+A and avoids transferring text that you don't want. It simply transfers the highlighted text. You then proceed with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

[HeatherV]

The 'Screen Shot' worked perfectly !!!!
Thanks very much for the help.

Regards,


Heather