6 Appendix A: Product Behavior

The information in this specification is applicable to the following Microsoft products or supplemental software. References to product versions include updates to those products.

  • Windows 2000 Server operating system

  • Windows XP operating system

  • Windows Server 2003 operating system

  • Windows Vista operating system

  • Windows Server 2008 operating system

  • Windows 7 operating system

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system

  • Windows 8 operating system

  • Windows Server 2012 operating system

  • Windows 8.1 operating system

  • Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system

  • Windows 10 operating system

  • Windows Server 2016 operating system

  • Windows Server operating system

  • Windows Server 2019 operating system

  • Windows Server 2022 operating system

  • Windows 11 operating system

  • Windows Server 2025 operating system

Exceptions, if any, are noted in this section. If an update version, service pack or Knowledge Base (KB) number appears with a product name, the behavior changed in that update. The new behavior also applies to subsequent updates unless otherwise specified. If a product edition appears with the product version, behavior is different in that product edition.

Unless otherwise specified, any statement of optional behavior in this specification that is prescribed using the terms "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" implies product behavior in accordance with the SHOULD or SHOULD NOT prescription. Unless otherwise specified, the term "MAY" implies that the product does not follow the prescription.

<1> Section 2.2.1:  The operating systems Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 append four bytes to the end of clipboard PDUs. These four bytes are not included in the PDU size specified by the dataLen field and can be ignored.

<2> Section 2.2.5.3: The operating systems Windows 10 v1803 operating system, Windows Server v1803 operating system, Windows 10 v1809 operating system, and Windows Server 2019 support values larger than 2,147,483,647 and less than or equal to 4,294,967,295 in the nPositionLow field irrespective of the advertised huge file support.

<3> Section 3.1.1.2: On Windows-based systems, the file list is encapsulated in a "File Group Descriptor" (for more information, see [MSDN-SHELLCLIP], "CFSTR_FILEDESCRIPTOR") generic data format. This format consists of an array of File Descriptors, each of which describes a single file in a collection. The Format Name of the File Group Descriptor format is "FileGroupDescriptorW" if the descriptor is in Unicode format; otherwise, it is "FileGroupDescriptor". The Clipboard Format ID is assigned dynamically and is not constant across computer systems.