Windows Mobile Professional has a clipboard, and 6.1 Standard too. I also use it a lot on my phone, which uses Linux.
My plain old $40 a month Nokia phone doesn’t have a camera, keyboard, internet access, maps, a bottle opener, or a slinky built in. But it has copy and paste.
AutoHotKey all the way!
Really, I believe most of the commentors here already know how to program no?
I’ve been using a small program called ClipDiary - http://softvoile.com/clipdiary/
I always wanted a clipboard log, but since installing it months ago, I’ve only used it a couple times.
Someone may have said this but… on my Windows Mobile phone, there is an on screen keyboard that has a Ctrl key so I can cut, copy and paste. It would drive me nuts if I could not.
I’m guessing the real reason the clipboard contains one item is that the vast majority of users want it to be simple. As a “power user” you can enhance the clipboard with 3rd party add-ons, but I’m sure most users would be confused with a clipboard history popup dialog box when they select Edit-Paste
The problem is – clipboard seldom really store those data, but only store a reference to those data. In this way, the client can request for alternative formats of the copied data. That is also why some application ask if you want to keep the clipboard data on close.
if you don’t know what i means, try to copy something from excel and parse to notepad, excel and word… all shown in different formats.
Same problem can be see for linux, see mozilla Bug 289897.
Hey Now Jeff,
Great info, I never used this tool before it sounds really good.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
I used to use apps like this all of the time. I was using Clipmate back in 2000, which had the same clipboard history ability. It improved my productivity tenfold, but I seem to have forgotten what that was like and relegated myself to the standard clipboard. Now I have to go find one that costs money to use at work. Yep, that’s right, they won’t let me use one unless it costs money.
+1 to Visual Studio for the Ctrl+Click feature that selects whole words, I love that.
I can’t really see adding the ability to store multiple clipboard items to the OS as an improvement of the situation.
Besides having to re-write apps to take advantage of any new OS clipboard features, backwards-compatibility would be a nightmare. The current clipboard functionality is well-worn and works flawlessly. If they tried to change it and did something wrong, all kinds of Windows apps would suddenly have problems. There are too many programs out there that depend on how it currently works, and not all of those are passing text back and forth. It might have been necessary to keep the base implementation simple in order to be able to pass any kind of data from one program to another.
I have to agree with Jon, the clipboard was meant to be transient. Plus those of us who have been using Windows for a really long time have gotten quite used to how it currently works.
A long time ago I bought Clipmate (http://www.thornsoft.com/) and was happy with it for a couple of years. But then, after some Windows service packs it developed stability issues, and I gave up on it.
the one thing that kills me is trying to cutting and paste from multiple virtual machines.
complete pain in the ass sometimes.
Deadprogrammer - I’m still using that app, they’ve updated it frequently and it works great with XP SP2. Not sure about Vista, though. Quite indispensable.
I’m Copying THIS, from HERE to THERE. That’s a very simple concept and it allows for a very simple interface
As I said in my post, this simple behavior is be retained with no modification-- CTRL+C and CTRL+V work the same as before. With an enhancement like ClipX, you can opt to press CTRL+SHIFT+V and get access to your clipboard history.
I’m certainly not lobbying for anything like the annoying Office clipboard “manager” which pops up every time you copy something to the clipboard, until it is invariably turned off. ClipX behavior is completely invisible and automatic until you press CTRL+SHIFT+V.
You point out the value of copy/paste in our culture, and how it’s almost impossible to live without it. I completely agree.
However, copy/paste is exactly what the MPAA/RIAA is trying to get rid of. Under US copyright law, we have permission to copy/paste materials under the banner of fair use. These companies (and others like Adobe and Microsoft) are pushing the use of DRM, which completely removes this right.
Fight against DRM for your right to copy/paste, http://www.eff.org/
I have been a ClipX fan for a few years, but never liked the default three-key shortcuts (it’s a bit awkward to press three keys with one hand). My favorite shortcut for Paste is ALT+C (a carry-over from CLCL, another clipboard manager). It’s impossible to set this shortcut directly in the the ClipX settings, but I found a workaround. If interested, please see a short post here: http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2007/05/clipx-fix.html
One more for Klipper and KDE…
Just because Windows is stuck in 1997, doesn’t mean the rest of us are medieval too… 
I thought MS Office supported multi-clip? I haven’t used it in awhile (not since my previous job), but I remember it being an option there, and I didn’t install any add-ons. I remember it was quite annoying because I’d get popups bugging me about which thing I wanted to copy/paste, when I always wanted to do the last one…
Yankee Clipper (http://www.intelexual.com/products/) has been my choice for years. I agree, I can’t work on a machine without it being installed.
Aditya said:
I like Ditto (a href="http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/"http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net//a) 
Has a better history browser.
I second Ditto. I use it as well (on Win XP Pro), and it’s been very solid and convenient for me. Uses SQLite as its back-end.
The one time I emailed the developer for help, he was very responsive. And yes, I subsequently sent him a contribution.
Development appears to have dropped off (it’s been at v 3.9 for some time), but the product is still very solid, configurable, and easy to use. Maybe if there’s an uptick in use, the development will accelerate again.
Someone else said:
Has anyone tried these clipboard history programs with Keepass Password Safe? They look useful but I fear they’ll conflict with its useful option to automatically clear the clipboard after the first paste of the password.
That’s been a concern of mine, as well. I don’t use the Keepass copy to clipboard feature (with automatic wipe of clipboard after x seconds or paste or whatever), partly as a result. Recent versions of Keepass (if I recall correctly) mention using some sort of protocol to let clipboard management programs know not to record/save the password that Keepass is writing to the clipboard. But I don’t know what clipboard management programs acknowledge/respect that protocol. Maybe Clipmate and/or some other bigger name commercial products. If/When Ditto development continues, such support would be a nice feature.