Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Sizing, Moving, and Arranging Windows

You can minimize, maximize, restore, or close a window by clicking the buttons at the right end of the title bar. Additionally, you can use the following techniques to change the size or position of an individual window:

• To change the location of a window, but not its size, drag it.
  Tip To drag a window, point to its title bar, press and hold the mouse button, and then move the mouse.
• To change only the height of a window, drag the top or bottom border of its frame.
• To maximize the height of a window without changing its width, drag the top border of its frame to the top edge of the screen or the bottom border of its frame to the bottom edge of the screen.
• To change the width of a window, drag the left or right border of its frame.
• To simultaneously change the height and width of a window, drag any corner of its frame.
  Tip You cannot resize a maximized window by dragging an edge of its frame; you must first restore the window to its non-maximized state.
• To maximize the height and width of a window so that the window fills the screen, drag it until the mouse pointer touches the top edge of the screen, or click the Maximize button.
• To resize a window to the maximum height and half the screen width, drag it until the mouse pointer touches the left or right edge of the screen. When you release the mouse button, the window expands to fill half the available horizontal space.
  Tip You can use this technique to compare the contents of two windows; simply drag one to the left and one to the right.
• To restore a maximized or half-width window to its original size, drag its title bar away from the edge of the screen, or click the Restore Down button.

You can automatically resize windows by dragging them to an edge of the screen.

Tip When you resize a window by using a dragging technique, the change isn't permanent until you release the mouse button. When you drag a window to the top, left, or right edge of the screen to resize it, an outline representing the resized window appears. If you don't want to resize the window to match the outline, simply drag away from that location before releasing the mouse button.

You can use the keyboard shortcuts shown in the following table to work with the open window.

Press this	To do this
Windows logo key+Up Arrow	Maximize the window
Windows logo key+Down Arrow	Resize the window from maximized to its original size or from its original size to minimized
Windows logo key+Home	Minimize or restore all other windows
Windows logo key+Left Arrow or Windows logo key+Right Arrow	Snap the window to the left or right edge of the screen
Alt+Tab	Switch between open windows

Right-clicking the taskbar (not a taskbar button) displays a shortcut menu of commands you can use to manage all the open windows as a group.

The taskbar shortcut menu includes four commands for manipulating open windows. You can arrange all currently open windows by clicking the following commands:

• Cascade windows This command displays the windows on top of each other, with the title bar of each window visible and the contents of only the top window visible.
• Show windows stacked This command displays the content of all the windows arranged in a grid, with more windows stacked vertically than horizontally. For example, eight windows are arranged in two columns of four.
• Show windows side by side This command displays the content of all the windows arranged in a grid, with more windows stacked horizontally than vertically. For example, eight windows are arranged in four columns of two.
• Show the desktop This command minimizes all the windows.

In every arrangement, the open windows are sized similarly, regardless of their size before you arranged them.

We will discuss these topics in the following sections.