So you’ve got a program that has shifted out of the viewable area of your computer screen.  It’s either partially visible, or you can’t find it all even though Windows says it is open and running… How do you get it back?

This happened to me this week when my Windows software completed an update and decided to reboot itself. When it came back up, my Mailwasher program was only partially visible with the top of the window off my screen.

The keyboard shortcut you need to know is alt+space.  Hitting keys alt and space together bring up the window menu for whatever program window you have currently selected. If that window is currently off-screen, the menu will appear anyway, on-screen. That will enable you to move the program.

If you run into a situation where you open an application, and the window does not appear on-screen, either click on the program (if it’s partially visible,) or if it’s completely missing then use alt+tab to switch to that application. Then hit both alt+space keys to open the window menu. With that menu is open, one of the options will be “Move.” Select move,  then use the arrow keys to start moving the window. It should pop into view right away. Once you have started to move with the arrow keys, then you can then move it where you want it with the mouse.

For other keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7 check out this list from Microsoft.