Fix: Windows 8 not saving captured Screenshots in Pictures folder

[fredlaso]

Till Windows 7, we had to rely upon third-party tools to capture current window or screen snapshot called screenshots, but with Windows 8, taking screenshots isn’t an issue. In order to capture whole screen at once, you need to just press Windows Key + PrintScreen or Windows Key + Fn + PrintScreen key combination on keyboard. While capturing screenshots, your laptop dims and then you can find the screenshot captured in the Screenshots folder under the Pictures library.
But what if you press the above mentioned keyboard combinations, Windows captures the screenshot, but it is not being saved. This will of course disappoint you, but if it is really important, you can just open Paint (native image editor in Windows) and press Ctrl + V (paste), you’ll now see the captured screenshot inside Paint in editing mode – which you can save as an image in your desired format. Anyway, lets stick to the topic and find out how to fix the issue, so that Windows can save the screenshots directly inside Pictures library.
Windows 8 not saving captured Screenshots in Pictures folder
1. Press Windows Key + R combination, type put Regedt32.exe in Run dialog box and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to the following location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

3. In the right pane of this location look for the ScreenshotIndex named DWORD (REG_DWORD). Since you’re facing the issue of screenshots not being saved, you’ll find this DWORD missing. So create the same using Right click -> New -> DWORD Value. Double click on the same DWORD to modify its Value data:

4. In the above shown box, first select the Decimal base and then input the Value data as 695. Click OK. Now to point out this registry DWORD to correct user profile settings, you should checkout the User Shell Folders entry inside Registry Editor. So move here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

5. In the right pane of this location, click on the {B7BEDE81-DF94-4682-A7D8-57A52620B86F} entry which is expandable string (REG_EXPAND_SZ). Make sure it point out to following Value data:
%USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Screenshots

After confirming the Value data, you can close the Registry Editor and reboot. Now, try to capture screenshots, you’ll observe that screenshots got saved where they should be, means the issue has been resolved.

More details here:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-8-not-saving-captured-screenshots