Cut and Copy Operations

To place information on the clipboard, a window first clears any previous clipboard content by using the EmptyClipboard function. This function sends the WM_DESTROYCLIPBOARD message to the previous clipboard owner, frees resources associated with data on the clipboard, and assigns clipboard ownership to the window that has the clipboard open. To find out which window owns the clipboard, call the GetClipboardOwner function.

After emptying the clipboard, the window places data on the clipboard in as many clipboard formats as possible, ordered from the most descriptive clipboard format to the least descriptive. For each format, the window calls the SetClipboardData function, specifying the format identifier and a global memory handle. The memory handle can be NULL, indicating that the window renders the data on request. For more information, see Delayed Rendering.