Often, an application needs to accept formatted data as an argument to a method or property. Examples include a bitmap, formatted text, or a spreadsheet range. When handling formatted data, the application should pass an object that implements the OLE IDataObject interface. For detailed information about the interface, see the OLE Programmer's Reference in the Win32 SDK.
By using this interface, applications can retrieve the data of any Clipboard format. Because an IDataObject instance can provide data of more than one format, a caller can provide data in several formats, and let the called object choose which format is most appropriate.
If the data object implements IDispatch, it should be passed using the VT_DISPATCH flag. If the data object does not support IDispatch, it should be passed with the VT_UNKNOWN flag.