Send Text in Clipboard to Application like Notepad (C# or Powershell)

Question

I want to be able to send the text on the clipboard, in Windows, to an application. For example, I'm working on a text file in notepad, and I want to copy a portion out into a new file..I want to copy it to the clipboard and then use a hotkey to launch an application or powershell script that sends that copied text to a new instance of Notepad.

How can I achieve this in C# or Powershell ?

SOLUTION: Using AutoHotKey

^+c::
Send ^c
Run Notepad
WinWait Untitled - Notepad
WinActivate
Send ^v
return

Answer 1

To get you started, in the excellent PowerShell Community Extensions library there is Get-Clipboard cmdlet that gets the content's of the current clipboard. From there it's fairly trivial to do whatever you want with the clipboard data, such as:

Get-Clipboard > test.txt; notepad test.txt

Running the above gets the current clipboard contents, sets them into test.txt and then opens test.txt in notepad.

Answer 2

One (hackish) strategy would be:

1. Start the process.
2. Activate its main window.
3. Simulate key-strokes as required.

---

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);

[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
    var p = Process.Start("Notepad.exe");
    p.WaitForInputIdle();
    SetForegroundWindow(p.MainWindowHandle); // this can probably be left out.
    SendKeys.SendWait(Clipboard.GetText());
}

In the specific case of a text-editor like notepad that accepts a path to a text-file as a command-line argument, you could do something more robust but less flexible:

[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
    var tempFilePath = Path.GetTempFileName();
    File.WriteAllText(tempFilePath , Clipboard.GetText());
    Process.Start("Notepad.exe", tempFilePath);
}

Answer 3

I have 2 solutions, one that uses PowerShell, the other that uses Autohotkey.

Autohotkey version

I would use this one ;) You define custom key and actions bound to the keys. My file contains this code:

^#n::
  Run, Notepad
  WinWaitActive Untitled - Notepad2
  Send !e
  Send p
  return

It runs notepad2 and then simulates pressing Alt+E and P. That pastes the string the same way as you would press it by yourself. From some reason I had some problems with 'pressing' Ctrl+V (I don't remember that any more). For more info have a look at Autohotkey's website.

PowerShell version

You need to use an editor like Notepad2. With switch /c it launches the Notepad2 and pastes the text from clipboard.

To make it more useful I use function tnp defined like this: (note that you need to run PowerShell with -sta parameter, otherwise they won't to work propely)

function tnp {
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
        [object]
        $InputObject
    )
  begin   { $objs = @() }
  process { $objs += $InputObject }
  end {
        $old = Get-clipboard # store current value
        $objs | out-string -width 1000 | Set-Clipboard
        notepad /c
        sleep -mil 500
        $old | Set-Clipboard # restore the original value
  }
}

function Set-Clipboard { 
  param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true,Position=0)][object]$s
  )
  begin { $sb = new-object Text.StringBuilder }
  process {
    $s | % { 
      if ($sb.Length -gt 0) { $null = $sb.AppendLine(); }
      $null = $sb.Append($_) 
    }
  }
  end { Add-Type –a system.windows.forms; [windows.forms.clipboard]::SetText($sb.Tostring()) }
}

function Get-Clipboard {
  Add-Type –a system.windows.forms
  [windows.forms.clipboard]::GetText() 
}

With these function you can run something like this:

# gets list of members, opens Notepad2 and pastes the content (members list)
(get-date) | gm | tnp

In other words -- if some info would be returned and formatted to screen, you can get it and paste to notepad.

Answer 4

If you end up using AutoHotKey, Add ClipWait to make sure AutoHotKey waits for Windows to actually change the clipboard

^+c::
Send ^c
ClipWait
Run Notepad
WinWait Untitled - Notepad
WinActivate
Send ^v
return

If you only want to use the clipboard as a temporary means to transfer the text (thus not lose what you previously saved in the clipboard), you can add something like the following:

^+c::
ClipSaved := ClipboardAll   ; Save the entire clipboard to a variable of your choice.
Send ^c
ClipWait   ; Wait for the clipboard to change
Run Notepad
WinWait Untitled - Notepad
WinActivate
Send ^v
Clipboard := ClipSaved   ; Restore the original clipboard.
ClipSaved =   ; Free the memory in case the clipboard was very large.
return