Clipboard.GetText returns null (empty string)

Question

My clipboard is populated with text, but when I run

string clipboardData = Clipboard.GetText(System.Windows.Forms.TextDataFormat.Text); 

I get back an empty string. I've toyed with various forms of the call including:

string clipboardData = Clipboard.GetText(); string clipboardData = Clipboard.GetText(System.Windows.Forms.TextDataFormat.UnicodeText); 

But with the same result.

Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

You can only access the clipboard from an STA thread. Rick Brewster ran into this with some refactoring of the regular Edit->Paste command, in Paint.NET.

Code:

IDataObject idat = null; Exception threadEx = null; Thread staThread = new Thread(     delegate ()     {         try         {             idat = Clipboard.GetDataObject();         }          catch (Exception ex)          {             threadEx = ex;                     }     }); staThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); staThread.Start(); staThread.Join(); // at this point either you have clipboard data or an exception 

Code is from Rick. http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/13712-/page__view__findpost__p__226140

Update: Jason Heine made a good point of adding () after delegate to fix the ambiguous method error.

Answer 2

Honestly, I don't know what a STA thread is, but in simple projects it might solve the problem to add [STAThread] right before the Main method:

[STAThread] static void Main(string[] args) { (...) 

It works for me, so I don't question the method ;)

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Further information about the [STAThread] decorator is on blog post Why is STAThread required?.