How would you clear the Microsoft Office Clipboard using VBA, specifically Word VBA?
I am copying a lot of data at time into the clipboard and don't want excessive data kept in the Clipboard.
6 Answers
16
votes
12
votes
Saw this on another post, and I have tested it with Word VBA.
'Clearing the Office Clipboard
Dim oData As New DataObject 'object to use the clipboard
oData.SetText text:=Empty 'Clear
oData.PutInClipboard 'take in the clipboard to empty it
Just copy and paste into your code where ever you need to clear the Clipboard.
Another thing I noticed is that when I .Quit a program, say Excel, it keeps asking me if I want to keep the data is the Clipboard. A work around is to clear the clipboard using the above stated code. See below:
'Clearing the Office Clipboard
Dim oData As New DataObject 'object to use the clipboard
oData.SetText text:=Empty 'Clear
oData.PutInClipboard 'take in the clipboard to empty it
'You can also just remove the Alert Messages from the Excel Program while
'the code is running
'Remove alert Messages from the Excel Program when closing
ExcelProgram.DisplayAlerts = False
'Quiting the Excel Application
ExcelProgram.Quit
I used the above example in a VBA code to import data from an Excel File. See here
3
votes
Here's a solution that worked for me. This is based on a post by by Zack Barresse on VBAexpress.com:
Public Declare Function OpenClipboard Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long) As Long
Public Declare Function EmptyClipboard Lib "user32" () As Long
Public Declare Function CloseClipboard Lib "user32" () As Long
Public Sub ClearClipboard()
OpenClipboard (0&)
EmptyClipboard
CloseClipboard
End Sub
After copying this function to your VBA project, use ClearClipboard to clear it.
1
votes
This functionality is held within the library "Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library". To link to that library go to the VBA editor, then Tools, References and pick it out from the list if it's not already ticked.
You can do more funky stuff with a bunch of WinAPI calls, but I generally prefer avoiding those unless absolutely necessary.
Also, don't forget about the DisplayAlerts property, which will suppress dialog boxes - although I'm not sure if it would always produce the desired result.
1
votes
A quick and easy solution I've just used is
MyDoc.Range.Characters(1).Copy
Where "MyDoc" is the name of the document you are using.
It doesn't technically empty the clipboard, it just makes it one character long (assuming your document starts with characters), which stops Word from popping up with annoying questions.
The purists may not like it, but heyho, it's dead easy :)
