Question

Can I Store more than 1 type in the Clipboard? Eg. like Text & Image. say the user pastes in a text editor, he gets the text and if he pastes in something like photoshop, he gets the image. I thought it was possible but I tried

Clipboard.Clear();
Clipboard.SetText(img.DirectLink);

BitmapImage bitmapImage = new BitmapImage();
bitmapImage.BeginInit();
bitmapImage.UriSource = new Uri(img.DirectLink);
bitmapImage.EndInit();

Clipboard.SetImage(bitmapImage);

and I always get the image

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. The main problem is, methods you are using clear clipboard before putting data (that’s why in particular they named “Set…” instead of “Add…”).

Clipboard.SetText (WinForms) / Clipboard.SetText (WPF) description from MSDN:

(WinForms): Clears the Clipboard and then adds text data in the Text or UnicodeText format, depending on the operating system.

But a solution is relatively easy:

To place data on the Clipboard in multiple formats, use the DataObject class or an IDataObject implementation. 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.

Check MSDN for details:

• WinForms: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/25w5tzxb.aspx

• WPF: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.clipboard.aspx

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UPDATE:

Added links to WPF variants.

To clarify @Björn comment:

The MSDN page for System.Windows.Clipboard.SetText() does not state that the clipboard is cleared, even though that seems to be the case

Both methods (WPF/WinForms) internally calls to OleSetClipboard so behaviour is similar (you can check http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#q=Clipboard.SetText).

I also checked both variants (WinForms/WPF) in console app and found they do the same.