The Crop And Lock app in the most recent release of Microsoft PowerToys, version 0.73.0, can assist enhance your productivity.
In a working environment where essential data flows through many files from almost every instructions, the capability to pull information rapidly and effectively from one place to enter it into another place ends up being critical to success. To help with this essential procedure, Crop And Lock has actually been consisted of in Version 0.73.0 of Microsoft PowerToys. This new application can assist you focus your attention on precisely the information you need from any displayed Windows 11 screen.
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What is the Crop And Lock app?
The Crop And Lock app (Figure A) enables users to crop a present application window into a smaller sized window or perhaps a thumbnail; the smaller sized window will focus the user’s attention on a specific section of the cropped application. The application will continue to run usually, but the user can focus only on what is displayed in the cropped variation of the app.
Figure A
The Crop And Lock settings page in Microsoft PowerToys. Image: Mark Kaelin/TechRepublic For instance, if you just wish to see 5 specific data points within a large Excel worksheet, you could resize windows and move them around to view what you need, or you might merely use Crop And Lock to rapidly highlight the cells into their own different window.
How to use Crop And Lock
Activating Crop And Lock needs a keyboard combination faster way. The default shortcuts are:
- Produce a thumbnail with Windows Key + CTRL + Shift + T.
- Crop to a smaller window with Windows Key + CTRL + Shift + R.
To illustrate Crop And Lock, look at Figure B, a sample Excel worksheet in table kind.
Figure B
< img src ="https://www.techrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tr-2023-09-22-b_powertoys_crop_and_lock-770x442.jpeg"alt ="A sample Excel worksheet featuring a table with mixed data. "width ="770 "height="442"/ > A sample Excel worksheet featuring a table with blended data. Image: Mark Kaelin/TechRepublic Using Crop And Lock, you can crop a smaller sized area of the Excel worksheet
and lift it out of the larger table (Figure C). Figure C A cropped section of the Excel worksheet different from the whole. Image: Mark Kaelin/TechRepublic
The cropped section lives on top of other windows and can be moved independently from the initial worksheet; however, if the initial data in the original worksheet is changed, it will be shown in our brand-new different cropped window also. This performance suggests that we can always keep that specific part of the Excel worksheet noticeable and utilize the data as necessary for other documents. This habits can be accomplished while the larger Excel worksheet is upgraded by coworkers or other data sources. We can focus on the one section that is necessary for our existing purposes.
Caveats to working with Crop And Lock
Similar to all the utilities in Microsoft PowerToys, Crop And Lock is thought about a beta application. Depending on which applications are included, you may see inconsistent habits. For instance, when I applied Crop And Lock to Excel, it went efficiently and ran as anticipated; when applied to Word, the app operated inconsistently.
Crop And Lock need to be thought about an operate in progress and not a completed and refined application.
