Items moved or copied to the Clipboard persist even after the application is shut down.

Data on the Clipboard can be in any data format, also called a Clipboard format. For a list of predefined formats to use with the Clipboard, see DataFormats. When an item is moved or copied to the Clipboard, items in other formats are cleared. To make other formats persist, use DataObject, which copies everything existing on the current Clipboard, including items pasted from other applications. Place data on the Clipboard in multiple formats to maximize the possibility that a target application, whose format requirements you might not know, can successfully retrieve the data.

Because all Windows applications share the system Clipboard, the contents may change when you switch to another application.

A class must be serializable for it to be put on the Clipboard. When accessing the Clipboard remotely, a ThreadStateException is thrown unless the accessing thread operates in STA (single-threaded apartment) mode. To resolve this issue, set the ThreadApartmentState to STA. For more information, see STAThreadAttribute.

The following table lists examples of tasks involving the My.Computer.Clipboard object.

This example reads text from the Clipboard into the string textOnClipboard.

Dim textOnClipboard As String = My.Computer.Clipboard.GetText()

This example will fail if there is no text on the Clipboard.

Namespace: Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices

Class: ClipboardProxy (provides access to Clipboard)

Assembly: Visual Basic Runtime Library (in Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll)

Availability by Project Type

Reference