My.Computer.Clipboard Object

Provides methods for manipulating the Clipboard.

Remarks

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.

Tasks

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

To	See
Clear the Clipboard	How to: Clear the Clipboard in Visual Basic
Read from the Clipboard	How to: Read from the Clipboard in Visual Basic
Find out what is stored on the Clipboard	How to: Determine What Type of File is Stored on the Clipboard in Visual Basic
Save audio to the Clipboard	How to: Save an Audio Stream to the Clipboard in Visual Basic
Get an image from the Clipboard	How to: Retrieve an Image from the Clipboard in Visual Basic
Store data to the Clipboard	How to: Write to the Clipboard in Visual Basic

Example

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.

Requirements

Namespace:Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices

Class:ClipboardProxy (provides access to Clipboard)

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

Availability by Project Type

Project type	Available
Windows Application	Yes
Class Library	Yes
Console Application	Yes
Windows Control Library	Yes
Web Control Library	No
Windows Service	Yes
Web Site	No

See Also

Reference

My.Computer.Clipboard Object Members

My.Computer Object

System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard