How to Use the Get-Clipboard Output in PowerShell

This article demonstrates how we can use the content of our clipboard in Windows PowerShell. You have probably been using the common Ctrl+C keyboard shortcuts for copying content.

This article will discuss how you can manipulate the content you have copied.

Use the Get-Clipboard Command and Use Its Output in PowerShell

We use the Get-Clipboard cmdlet to display the content of our clipboard on PowerShell. Here is an example:

We will copy some random text from a webpage and output the same on Powershell. Below is the script we will use:

Get-Clipboard

It is important to note that from PowerShell core V6+ the only supported data format is .text. You can check your PowerShell version by running the $PSVersionTable command.

How can we use the content of our clipboard in PowerShell? Here is a simple way.

Let’s say we have copied the text and want to paste it into a file on our machine. How would we go about this using PowerShell?

We will employ the Add-Content cmdlet on Powershell in such a scenario. Here is the script we will use:

Add-Content -Path C:\Users\pc\Demo\Demo.txt -Value (Get-Clipboard)

This should paste the contents of our clipboard to our Demo.txt file. Let’s try something more complicated.

Let’s say we have a Demo.txt file in the Demo folder, and we want to make a copy of the file in the Trial folder. How do we go about this using PowerShell?

In such a scenario, we will use the Copy-Item cmdlet to copy the Demo.txt file, and for the Destination parameter, we will use the full path of our Trial folder.

For that to happen, we will need to copy the full path of our Trial folder. We will use the Shift key and the right mouse button to copy the path.

This will get the full path of the Trial folder as a quoted path string.

Then we will run the script below:

Copy-Item C:\Users\pc\Demo\Demo.txt -Destination (Get-Clipboard).Replace('"', "")

Note that Copy-Item rejects quoted paths. Our remedy to that is replacing the quotes hence the .Replace('"',"") part in the script.

In a nutshell, the Get-Clipboard cmdlet allows us to manipulate the contents of our clipboard. Remember that since PowerShell core v6+, only text data is supported.