Get-Clipboard

Gets the current Windows clipboard entry.

Syntax

Get-Clipboard
   [-Format <ClipboardFormat>]
   [-TextFormatType <TextDataFormat>]
   [-Raw]
   [<CommonParameters>]

Description

The Get-Clipboard cmdlet gets the current Windows clipboard entry. Multiple lines of text are returned as an array of strings similar to Get-Content.

Examples

Example 1: Get the content of the clipboard and display it to the command-line

In this example we have right-clicked on an image in a browser and chose the Copy action. The following command displays the link, as a URL, of the image that is stored in the clipboard.

Get-Clipboard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerShell

Example 2: Get the content of the clipboard in a specific format

In this example we copied files to the clipboard in Windows Explorer by selecting them and pressing Ctrl-C. Using the following command, you can access the contents of the clipboard as a list of files:

Get-Clipboard -Format FileDropList

Directory: C:\Git\PS-Docs\PowerShell-Docs\wmf

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         5/7/2019   1:11 PM          10010 TOC.yml
-a----       11/18/2016  10:10 AM             53 md.style
-a----         5/6/2019   9:32 AM           4177 overview.md
-a----        6/28/2018   2:28 PM            345 README.md

Parameters

-Format

Specifies the type, or format, of the clipboard. The acceptable values for this parameter are:

  • Text
  • FileDropList
  • Image
  • Audio
Type:ClipboardFormat
Accepted values:Text, FileDropList, Image, Audio
Position:Named
Default value:None
Required:False
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:False

-Raw

Gets the entire contents of the clipboard. Multiline text is returned as a single multiline string rather than an array of strings.

Type:SwitchParameter
Position:Named
Default value:None
Required:False
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:False

-TextFormatType

Specifies the text data format type of the clipboard. The acceptable values for this parameter are:

  • Text
  • UnicodeText
  • Rtf
  • Html
  • CommaSeparatedValue
Type:TextDataFormat
Accepted values:Text, UnicodeText, Rtf, Html, CommaSeparatedValue
Position:Named
Default value:None
Required:False
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:False

Inputs

None

You can't pipe objects to this cmdlet.

Outputs

String

FileInfo

Stream

Image

Notes

Windows PowerShell includes the following aliases for Get-Clipboard:

  • gcb