ACC: How to Retrieve Information from the Clipboard (95/97) (138910)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Access for Windows 95 7.0
  • Microsoft Access 97

This article was previously published under Q138910

SUMMARY

Advanced: Requires expert coding, interoperability, and multiuser skills.

Microsoft Access does not have a command to retrieve information from the Clipboard. To retrieve information from the Clipboard, you need to define a Visual Basic for Applications function that calls several Windows API functions. This article defines a function that retrieves text from the Clipboard.

This article assumes that you are familiar with Visual Basic for Applications and with creating Microsoft Access applications using the programming tools provided with Microsoft Access. For more information about Visual Basic for Applications, please refer to your version of the "Building Applications with Microsoft Access" manual.

MORE INFORMATION

To retrieve information from the Clipboard, follow these steps.

NOTE: You may have some Microsoft Windows API functions defined in an existing Microsoft Access library; therefore, your declarations may be duplicates. If you receive a duplicate procedure name error message, remove or comment out the declarations statement in your code.

  1. Create a module and type the following lines in the Declarations section:
          Declare Function OpenClipboard Lib "User32" (ByVal hwnd As Long) _
             As Long
          Declare Function CloseClipboard Lib "User32" () As Long
          Declare Function GetClipboardData Lib "User32" (ByVal wFormat As _
             Long) As Long
          Declare Function GlobalAlloc Lib "kernel32" (ByVal wFlags&, ByVal _
             dwBytes As Long) As Long
          Declare Function GlobalLock Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hMem As Long) _
             As Long
          Declare Function GlobalUnlock Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hMem As Long) _
             As Long
          Declare Function GlobalSize Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hMem As Long) _
             As Long
          Declare Function lstrcpy Lib "kernel32" (ByVal lpString1 As Any, _
             ByVal lpString2 As Any) As Long
    
          Public Const GHND = &H42
          Public Const CF_TEXT = 1
          Public Const MAXSIZE = 4096
    						
  2. Type the following procedure:
           Function ClipBoard_GetData()
             Dim hClipMemory As Long
             Dim lpClipMemory As Long
             Dim MyString As String
             Dim RetVal As Long
    
             If OpenClipboard(0&) = 0 Then
                MsgBox "Cannot open Clipboard. Another app. may have it open"
                Exit Function
             End If
    
             ' Obtain the handle to the global memory
             ' block that is referencing the text.
             hClipMemory = GetClipboardData(CF_TEXT)
             If IsNull(hClipMemory) Then
                MsgBox "Could not allocate memory"
                GoTo OutOfHere
             End If
    
             ' Lock Clipboard memory so we can reference
             ' the actual data string.
             lpClipMemory = GlobalLock(hClipMemory)
    
             If Not IsNull(lpClipMemory) Then
                MyString = Space$(MAXSIZE)
                RetVal = lstrcpy(MyString, lpClipMemory)
                RetVal = GlobalUnlock(hClipMemory)
    
                ' Peel off the null terminating character.
                MyString = Mid(MyString, 1, InStr(1, MyString, Chr$(0), 0) - 1)
             Else
                MsgBox "Could not lock memory to copy string from."
             End If
    
          OutOfHere:
    
             RetVal = CloseClipboard()
             ClipBoard_GetData = MyString
    
          End Function
    						
  3. To test this function, copy one of the lines from the function to the Clipboard, type the following line in the Debug window, and then press ENTER.

    ?ClipBoard_GetData()

    Note that the line you copied is displayed in the Debug window.

REFERENCES

For an example of how to retrieve information from the Clipboard in Microsoft Access 1.x and 2.0, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

94162 ACC: How to Retrieve Information from the Clipboard (1.x, 2.0)

For more information about declaring API functions, search for "Declare statement" and then "Declare Statement" using the Microsoft Access 97 Help Index.

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:10/11/2006
Keywords:kbhowto kbProgramming KB138910