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I have a dual monitor setup, and I recently played around with the positioning settings, and some of my single window applications do the favour of preserving where they were last closed, and opening in the same position later. Unfortuanately, that now places them out of the viewable area of my screens!

Is there some way to force a particular window into the viewable area? If it matters at all, this is on Windows XP 32b.

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I use this approach:

  • Use ALT+TAB to switch to the off-screen application.
  • Press ALT-SPACE to bring up the system menu (you won't see it because it is off screen)
  • Press R to select the "Restore" menu choice to ensure the windows isn't is maximized (you can not move it if it is maximized)
  • Press ALT-SPACE again, then M to select the "Move" menu choice.
  • Press one of the arrow keys to initiate the movement.
  • Now just use the mouse to place the window where you want.

If you are using a non-english version of Windows, the "R" and "M" menu choices probably wil be different.

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For reference, this is all accessible via right clicking the task bar icon for the window (if it is available). – Matthew Scharley Oct 10 '09 at 9:02
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To add to this, on Windows 7 you can use Windows+Left or Right to put the window to one edge of the screen, making it visible again. You can then drag it off there and it will remain on-screen. – Joey Oct 10 '09 at 9:19
@Johannes or Win+Up to maximize thw window. – Wedge Oct 10 '09 at 9:52
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up vote 5 down vote

You can right-click the program's button on the taskbar, and then click "Move". You can now use the arrow-buttons on your keyboard to move the window where you can see it. Requires some fiddling, sometimes the windows get "stuck" on the monitors edges. You can also try using the mouse, but the keyboard is a bit more reliable if you can't see the window yet ;-)

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Didn't know about the keyboard, but you can't use the mouse if they are offscreen, I tried that already. – Matthew Scharley Oct 10 '09 at 8:54
You should be able to use the arrow keys even if they are offscreen, unless there is something non-standard on your system that prevents this. This has always been my standard response for people experiencing this issue. – music2myear Apr 22 '11 at 19:13
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up vote 4 down vote

To quickly solve this problem in the future, and to position applications over the dual-screen I can recommend Winsplit Revolution. It reduces solving this problem to simply pressing Ctrl-Alt and a num-pad key to put the window back exactly where you want it.

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up vote 3 down vote

Another fast way is to r-click on the task bar and select Cascade Windows.

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This is a rather ugly way of doing it because it'll affect all my open windows (and I usually have atleast a browser open as well, if not half a dozen others) – Matthew Scharley Oct 10 '09 at 9:22
True, it's fastest however. Also you can close the window that was off screen and use undo cascade after that which will restore positions of the windows. I don't know if it will also restore position of the window that was off screen to that position since I can't try it (only have one monitor). – T. Kaltnekar Oct 10 '09 at 10:22
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up vote 3 down vote

For windows 7 users: Windows + Shift + Left/Right will move the window to the subsequent monitor

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up vote 1 down vote

Back before there was the task bar, I used to fix this problem with Alt+Space to bring up the window menu, then M for the Move function. The arrow keys would then allow you to move the window back on-screen.

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up vote 1 down vote

I use a nifty little tool called Shove-it which simply checks whether any window is outside the screen edge and shoves it back onto the screen again. It's ancient software (and the homepage proves it) but works on all Windows versions.

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up vote 1 down vote

I had the same issue with winamp. The only (unsatisfactory) solution i found so far: change the screen resolution to a different one and back

Thomas

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up vote 0 down vote

I just ran into this problem with Git GUI on Windows 7, which is based on Tk and as such tends to glitch out in weird ways at times on Windows. I tried hitting Alt-Space and using the move command to shimmy it back into view, but it seemed stuck. Maximising it would bring it back, but if I put it back into windowed mode it would disappear again.

What I did was maximise it, grab the title bar, and drag it to the side of the screen so that Aero Snap sized it to half the screen size and put it into windowed mode. After that, I dragged it away from the side of the screen, and regained control of it.

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