Question

I am writing a test app for a larger project and cant seem to retrieve Unicode CSV data from the Windows Clipboard, I am successful at retrieving CF_UNICODETEXT, using the built in GetClipboardData api call, however when I place Unicode CSV on the clipboard in MSExcel and try to retrieve with CSV format, I get bad data. Here is some code;

procedure TForm1.Button7Click(Sender: TObject);
var
   hMem     : THandle;
   dwLen    : DWord;
   ps1, ps2 : pChar;
begin
   OpenClipboard( form1.Handle );
   RichEdit1.Lines.Clear;
   try
      if Clipboard.HasFormat( CF_UNICODETEXT ) then
      begin
         hMem := GetClipboardData( CF_UNICODETEXT );
         ps1 := GlobalLock( hMem );
         dwLen := GlobalSize( hMem );
         ps2 := StrAlloc( 1 + dwLen );
         StrLCopy( ps2, ps1, dwLen );
         GlobalUnlock( hMem );
         RichEdit1.Lines.Add( ps2 );
      end
      else
         ShowMessage( 'No CF_UNICODETEXT on Clipboard!' );
   finally
      CloseClipboard;
   end;
end;

Now this code should work for CSV as well, but when I change my Clipboard format to what I’m desiring, the app will not get proper data. It might be important to know that I can get tabbed Unicode just fine, just not he CSV I desire.

Answer 1

The CSV clipboard format Excel uses is ANSI encoded, not Unicode.

From dumping the Excel 2007 clipboard, the ones that are Unicode enabled are:

• CF_UNICODETEXT
• “HTML Format”
• “Rich Text Format”
• “XML Spreadsheet”

“XML Spreadsheet” and “HTML Format” both have well defined tables/rows, so they shouldn’t be too hard to pull data from.