Windows Clipboard Formats

Definitions

The following type definitions are used in the below tables:

ANSI text

Null terminated ANSI or multi byte string

Unicode text

Null terminated Unicode (UTF-16LE) string

ANSI / Unicode text list

List of null terminated strings followed by a NULL character (double NULL terminated)

ASCII / ANSI text

ASCII 7-bit text by definition but ANSI 8-bit text may be supported

DWORD (BOOL)

DWORD value representing a boolean value (true if not zero)

Links indicate the destination in brackets. For MSDN links in the tables, the indication is omitted.

Standard Clipboard Formats

The Standard Clipboard Formats [MSDN] use numeric IDs defined in WinUser.h. All non-standard formats must be registered using a unique format name.

Shell Clipboard Formats

The Shell Clipboard Formats [MSDN] are used to transfer shell objects via clipboard and Drag & Drop. For most of them, there is a definition for the format name in the header file shlobj.h:

Drag & Drop Related Formats

These formats are used with Drag & Drop. Most of them are not documented.

OLE Formats

Common Application Clipboard Formats

Many applications use the file extension or the MIME type [Wikipedia] as format name and pass data using the corresponding file format. The format names are case-insensitive but it is common practice to use all lower case for MIME types, all upper case for file extensions and Pascal case (upper case for first letter of each word) for descriptive names. Clipboard and drop target applications that should be able to receive such formats should register all commonly used format name variations.

The header file UrlMon.h contains some definitions for MIME types (see URL Moniker Clipboard Formats [MSDN]).

Common Text Formats

Common Image Formats

Points of Interest

My article Drag & Drop Images and Drop Descriptions for MFC Applications contains a demo application that can be used to show the objects actually on the clipboard (clipboard viewer) and the drag objects when dropping on an info list.

References

• Clipboard Formats [MSDN]
• Standard Clipboard Formats [MSDN]
• Shell Clipboard Formats [MSDN]
• Shell Data Object [MSDN]
• Handling Shell Data Transfer Scenarios [MSDN]
• HTML Clipboard Format [MSDN]
• RegisterClipboardFormat function [MSDN]
• OLE Background [MSDN]
• Clipboard API and events [W3C]

History

• 8^th April, 2016: Initial version
• 14^th April, 2016: Minor text changings, added links to GUID and URL moniker formats
• 18^th April, 2016: Splitted and re-arranged tables, added some OLE formats, added text/richtext, corrected enhanced meta file type
• 21^st June, 2016: Added formats text/uri-list, image/bmp, BMP; added link to W3C clipboard API
• 22^nd June, 2017: Added AsyncFlag format and that Preferred DropEffect also used with clipboard
• 8^th March, 2018: Fixed wrong FileContents description