Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Name

Clipboard

Synopsis

A shared, system-wide storage area for temporarily holding and moving data.

To Open

Edit → Cut (Ctrl-X)

Edit → Copy (Ctrl-C)

Edit → Paste (Ctrl-V)

The Clipboard is an invisible portion of memory, used to temporarily hold data as it’s moved or copied from one application to another. Although you won’t ever “see” the clipboard, it’s used every time you cut, copy, or paste something.

Using the clipboard is easy. Select a portion of text in your word processor, an image in your graphics program, or a file in Explorer, and then select Cut from the Edit menu; the selected object(s) will disappear and will be stored in the clipboard. (Use Copy instead of Cut if you don’t want the original data erased.) Then, move to another location and select Paste from the Edit menu to place a copy of the object on the clipboard in that location. You can repeatedly paste the data as many times as you like.

Notes

• The Clipboard works like the penalty box in hockey; it holds only one item at a time. If you place new data in the clipboard, its previous contents are erased. If you never got around to pasting the previous data, it’s lost for good.

• You can paste only data that an application is prepared to receive. For example, you cannot paste an image into some applications that recognize only text (such as the Command Prompt or Notepad).

• Even without an Edit menu, you can usually still access the clipboard using either keyboard shortcuts or the right mouse button. For example, web browsers ...