How can you get the clipboard contents with a Windows command?

Question

For example, I can copy a file to the clipboard like this:

clip < file.txt

(Now the contents of file.txt is in the clipboard.)

How can I do the opposite:

???? > file.txt

So that the contents of the clipboard will be in file.txt?

Answer 1

If it would be acceptable to use PowerShell (and not cmd), then you can use Get-Clipboard exactly as you were looking for.

Get-Clipboard > myfile.txt

The advantage of this method is that you have nothing to install.

Note: In place of clip you can use Set-Clipboard that has more options.

Note 2: If you really want to run it from cmd, you can call powershell as in the following example powershell -command "Get-Clipboard | sort | Set-Clipboard".

Answer 2

Clarifying an answer from @Kpym:

powershell -command "Get-Clipboard" > file.txt

This directly answers the question without using a 3rd party tool.

Answer 3

You can use the paste.exe software in order to paste text just like you are describing.

http://www.c3scripts.com/tutorials/msdos/paste.html

With it you can do:

paste | command

to paste the contents of the windows clipboard into the input of the specified command prompt

or

paste > filename

to paste the clipboard contents to the specified file.

Answer 4

To get contents of clipboard

From win cmd:

powershell get-clipboard

or (via a temp file from HTML parser) on cmd:

echo x = CreateObject("htmlfile").ParentWindow.ClipboardData.GetData("text") > temp.vbs
echo WScript.Echo x >> temp.vbs
cscript //nologo temp.vbs

Output may be redirected to file.

Answer 5

Using the doskey macro definition feature, you can do:

doskey unclip=(powershell -command "Get-Clipboard") $*

Then (e.g.)

dir/b | clip
unclip | sort/r

Answer 6

Pasteboard is another option. It can also work from WSL. First, install via choco:

choco install pasteboard

then the command is simply

pbpaste.exe > file.txt

And that works from cmd and wsl bash.

Answer 7

Well, from a million years ago, we did something like this:

type con > filename.txt

... and then you perform your paste operation (Ctrl-v, middle-click the mouse, or choose Edit->Paste from them menu) into the waiting prompt. This will capture the stdin buffer (the console device, named 'con'), and when an end-of-file is received, it will write the contents to the file. So, after your paste, you type 'Ctrl-z' to generate an EOF, and the type command terminates, and the contents of your paste buffer (the clipboard) are captured in 'filename.txt'.

Answer 8

I have a pair of utilities (from before the Clip command was part of windows) available on this page:

http://www.clipboardextender.com/general-clipboard-use/command-window-output-to-clipboard-in-vista

There are two utilities in there, Clip2DOS and DOS2Clip. You want Clip2DOS:

Clip2DOS Copyright 2006 Thornsoft Development Dumps clipboard text (1024 bytes) to stdout.
Usage: Clip2Dos.exe > out.txt Result: text is in the file. Limits: 1024 bytes. License: Free, as in Free Beer! http://www.thornsoft.com/dist/techsupport/dos2clip.zip

DELPHI SOURCE INCLUDED!

And hey, here it is (Clip2DOS.dpr) :

{Clip2DOS - copyright 2005 Thornsoft Development, Inc.  All rights reserved.}
program Clip2Dos;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  Clipbrd,
  ExceptionLog,
  SysUtils;

var
   p : Array[0..1024] of Char;
begin
  try
    WriteLn('Clip2DOS Copyright 2006 Thornsoft Development');
    Clipboard.GetTextBuf(p,1024);
    WriteLn(p);
  except
    //Handle error condition
    on E: Exception do
            begin
              beep;
              Writeln(SysUtils.format('Clip2DOS - Error: %s',[E.Message]));
              ExitCode := 1;    //Set ExitCode <> 0 to flag error condition (by convention)
            end;
  end
end.

Answer 9

There are third party clip commands that work bidirectionally.

Here's one:

    CLIP - Copy the specified text file to the clip board
    Copyright (c) 1998,99 by Dave Navarro, Jr. (dave@basicguru.com)

Answer 10

Here is the CLIP program by Dave Navarro, as referred to in the answer by @foxidrive. It is mentioned in an article here: copying-from-clipboard-to-xywrite

A link to the download, along with many other resources is on this page: http://www.lexitec.fi/xywrite/utility.html

Here is a direct link to the download: "DOWNLOAD Clip.exe Copy from and to the clipboard by Dave Navarro, Jr."

Answer 11

It may be possible with vbs:

Option Explicit
 
' Gets clipboard's contents as pure text and saves it or open it

Dim filePath : filePath = "clipboard.txt"

' Use the HTML parser to have access to the clipboard and get text content
Dim text : text = CreateObject("htmlfile").ParentWindow.ClipboardData.GetData("text")

' to open
If Not IsNull(text) then
Dim WshShell, somestring, txFldr2Open
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

txFldr2Open = "C:\Users"
txFldr2Open = text

somestring = "EXPLORER.exe /e," & txFldr2Open ', /select
WshShell.run somestring
Set WshShell = Nothing
else 
msgbox("Empty")

end if



' Create the file and write on it
msgbox(text)
Dim fileObj : Set fileObj = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").CreateTextFile(filePath)
fileObj.Write(text)
fileObj.Close

Answer 12

You can use cbecho, a program I wrote in plain C. It will send any clipboard text to stdout, from where you can pipe it to other programs.

Answer 13

This dirty trick worked for my needs, and it comes with Windows!

notepad.exe file.txt

Ctrl + V, Ctrl + S, Alt + F, X