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I've done that when the underlying window context is important.
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You've taken a screen shot, printed it out, scanned the print out, embedded it into a PDF, and then emailed it?
Screen shots I get, but this was way out there. And it couldn't even simply be the computer had no internet connection and they didn't have a portable storage device either, because this was a web app.
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At least he didn't print it out and Fedex it to you.
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He could have FedEx-ed it to a police artist who came knocking on his door to draw it for him. 
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It's too soon to rule that out.
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I've had tickets like that before. I had one where someone took a screenshot, then pasted it into Word, then (mystifyingly) took a screenshot of Word and attached that to the ticket. By that point, the original screenshot was shrunk to the point of uselessness. One wonders the thought process behind something like that.
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1st assumption....thought process
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Teach them that the PDF can be OCR'ed
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They probably know that already, our software includes an OCR component 
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I feel you. Had that experience a couple times myself. How do these people get jobs?
*sigh*
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The explanation is obvious: the guy has no network access and can only send mail from the neighboring cybercafé, using Papernet for transfers.
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It's because people know that us nerdy types go all round Robin Hood's barn to achieve simple things (I mean, even sort algorithms look ridiculously complex and difficult, to the un-nerdified), so they think they have to emulate that complexity when they communicate with us.
So it's a courtesy, and you should be more appreciative.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Most of my users at least know to use a PrtScn. It's real annoying for those who have dual monitors. Many seem to have difficulty with the Alt-PrtScn.
I also have a copyable error message that has not yet been used.
But I have another avenue that works most of the time. I log the error in a database.
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BruceMIII wrote: But I have another avenue that works most of the time. I log the error in a database.
Our main application does that. It's harder for a web application if it's having difficulty communicating with the server though. (Not to say it couldn't use a little more robust solution for logging however.)
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The first idea that comes to mind is that it went through many different people in different services. It's not that any individual was retarded beyond all hope, it's that it got passed around between many people, for different distances.
One of the intermediaries has a problem with Outlook so they can't open e-mails at the moment. Therefore, the most straightforward way to show them something is to print it out. Then they forward it to someone else who can't be arsed to walk to the other building 2 miles away so they scan it and send it.
If the original user wasn't aware that the text box was copyable, he immediately thought of making a screenshot. Or maybe he had prepared his screen so that it was a fullscreen screenshot with useful context, but someone in the middle decided to do you a service a cropped the image.
I can totally imagine that error report going through a Rube-Goldberg-worthy adventure into your inbox.
Tell me, how many people were involved in the routing of that error report?
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Edsger Dijkstra
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Donkey Master wrote: Tell me, how many people were involved in the routing of that error report?
To my knowledge, just 2: the customer and the support person who forwarded the email to us. However, there is generally a person at each customer site who acts as a point of contact with us, so passing through at least 2 people on that end isn't impossible. It would be interesting to know if your hypothesis is correct though, it does make a lot more sense.
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Yeaaaaah... we're a satellite ISP and have definitely received network diagrams drawn (literally) with crayons before.
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I worked at a satellite ISP for a summer, but all our network diagrams were given in dry erase marker.
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Most of them aren't that bad, but there are definitely some customers who are trying to set up their own and are unwilling to pay a technical person to do it properly form them. 
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Oh you meant home networks, I was thinking internal network diagrams. Luckily, I worked on internal tools there, never had to deal with those.
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Actually, no. We're high-grade, business-only interwebs. And we still get crayon drawings!
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I guess my question now is...why do they have crayons to begin with?
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Now that is a question I would love to have an answer to!
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Given that it passed for at least 2 hands, most likely, the user took the screenshot and printed it, then sent (or gave) it to the the technician who had no choice but scan it and send it to you as PDF, at least that's the scenario that makes more sense...
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