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

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

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 3

Clarifying an answer from #Kpym:
powershell -command "Get-Clipboard" > file.txt
This directly answers the question without using a 3rd party tool.

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

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 7

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 8

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 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

I am not sure if this command was not supported at that time or not, but it surely does work
clip > file.txt

Answer 14

This dirty trick worked for my needs, and it comes with Windows!
notepad.exe file.txt
Ctrl + V, Ctrl + S, Alt + F, X