Teach Yourself Windows 95 in 24 Hours, Second Edition

- Hour 12 -

Clip and Save

This hour describes a fundamental Windows 95 tool that you've already used a few times in this book. The Clipboard is the go-between Windows 95 storage location for all kinds of data that you want to transfer between programs. The Windows 95 Clipboard holds text, pictures, sound files, and multimedia presentations.

You will get a little break in this hour. This hour goes fast (because the chapter is fairly short), but the basics you learn here help you with virtually anything you will ever do with Windows 95 in the future. The Clipboard's fundamental use is simple, as you've already seen; the Clipboard holds data until you remove the data or copy new data over the old. Unlike many implementations of a clipboard (many word processors support some form of a clipboard), you can look at and manage the Windows 95 Clipboard through the Clipboard Viewer application.

JUST A MINUTE: Often, small utility programs, such as the Clipboard Viewer that you learn about in this chapter, are called applets because these programs are small and don't do much on their own, but support other applications.

The highlights of this hour include:

How to use the Clipboard most effectively
Why former MS-DOS users gain Print Screen advantages in Windows 95
How the Clipboard Viewer helps make Clipboard management easier
The advantages of Clipboard linking

The Clipboard Functions

The Windows 95 Clipboard works with all kinds of Windows 95 programs. Inside virtually any Windows 95 program, you can copy data to the Clipboard, as shown in Figure 12.1. The Clipboard is a section of Windows 95 memory where you can place items that you cut or copy. The contents of the Clipboard stay with the Clipboard even after you paste those contents into another program. For example, in the previous chapter you copied a Paint picture of a face to the Windows 95 Clipboard. Then you started the WordPad text editor and pasted the Clipboard's contents into a text document.

Figure 12.1. The Windows 95 Clipboard routes data to and from virtually any Windows 95 program.

Windows Minute

Clipboard or Desktop?

The Clipboard is not as permanent as the scraps and shortcuts that you place on the Windows 95 desktop. Suppose that you copy a word processing paragraph of text to the Clipboard and also to the desktop as a scrap. If you exit the word processor and start a spreadsheet program, you can copy from either the Clipboard or from the desktop. If you then copy a group of spreadsheet cells to both the Clipboard and to the desktop as a scrap, the original Clipboard contents will be overwritten by the spreadsheet data, but the desktop will now have two scraps. If you shut down Windows 95 and started Windows 95 once again, the Clipboard would be empty, but the desktop would still contain the two scraps.

The desktop always retains scraps until you delete them. The Clipboard is always erased when you exit Windows 95. The Clipboard is also overwritten when you copy something new
to it.

Before Windows became the standard operating environment, users worked with the
MS-DOS environment. One MS-DOS feature often missed by Windows users is the operation of the Print Screen key. When MS-DOS users pressed PrtSc (spelled out with the full command on some keyboards), an image of the screen went directly to the printer. When Windows 95 users press PrtSc, nothing happens with their printers; instead of going to the printer, an image of the screen goes to the Windows 95 Clipboard. Once on the Clipboard, you can print the screen image only by pasting the Clipboard's contents into Paint or some other program that can handle graphic images.

TIME SAVER:: Although Windows 95 requires more work than MS-DOS to print a screen image, the Clipboard offers a much better productivity tool than the direct screen-printing mode that is the only MS-DOS offering. Once it's on the Clipboard, you can paste the screen image into Paint and modify, color, expand, or shrink the image before printing it.

JUST A MINUTE: Screen images are useful for users writing tutorials and presentations. Also, you can print screen images if an unusual message appears on your screen and you want to ask someone else later about the meaning of the message.

Task 12.1: Using the Clipboard Functions

Step 1: Description
You've already used the Clipboard, but this task reviews specific Clipboard usage so that you can better understand the need for the Clipboard Viewer that's introduced in the next section.

Step 2: Action

1. Start WordPad.

2. Type the following sentence:

The clipboard is one of the handiest tools in Windows 95!

3. Select the word clipboard by highlighting the word with the mouse.

4. Display the Edit menu. The Copy command (Ctrl+C) copies selected text to the Clipboard. The text that you copy remains in the WordPad document. The Cut command (Ctrl+X) deletes text from WordPad and sends that deleted text to the Clipboard. Paste inserts the contents of the Clipboard into the document. Paste Special inserts the contents of the Clipboard using a special linking situation described in the last section of this chapter.

TIME SAVER:: Although the Windows 95 documentation does not discuss these keystrokes, Ctrl+Ins is a shortcut key combination for Copy and Shift+Ins is a shortcut key combination for Paste. Shift+Del is a shortcut for Cut. Ctrl+Ins, Shift+Ins, and Shift+Del were officially supported in early Windows programs written by and for Microsoft. Many users got used to these keystroke shortcuts so Microsoft products still support the keystrokes today.

5. Point to the selected text and click the right mouse button to see a right-click menu that also contains Cut, Copy, and Paste commands that work exactly like the Edit commands just described. Press Esc to get rid of the right-click menu.

6. Copy the selected word to the Clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C.

7. If you have maximized the WordPad window, resize the window so that you can see the desktop. Click the right mouse button over the desktop and select Paste. The scrap with the Clipboard word clipboard appears on the desktop. The word is now on the desktop and on the Clipboard (as well as still in the original document) as a scrap.

CAUTION: For some strange reason you cannot paste scraps from the Clipboard onto the desktop unless the program where you got those scraps is still open. The desktop seems to be linked to WordPad and other application programs instead of being linked to the Clipboard. Therefore, your Clipboard contents still remain once you exit a program such as WordPad, but you cannot paste the Clipboard onto the desktop once you exit WordPad.

8. Exit WordPad. Don't save the WordPad document.

9. Start the Notepad program.

10. Press Ctrl+V to paste the Clipboard's word onto the Notepad window as shown in Figure 12.2.

Figure 12.2. The Clipboard might contain a single word or many pages of text.

11. Exit Notepad. Do not save the file.

12. Restart Windows 95 by selecting the Shut down and Restart the computer? commands so that Windows 95 restarts fresh.

13. As soon as Windows 95 shuts down before starting up again, Windows 95 removes the word from the Clipboard. When Windows 95 reappears on your screen, you will still see the desktop's scrap because the desktop stays the same between startups. The Clipboard, however, is emptied when you restart Windows 95. If you were to start WordPad, WordPad's Paste command would be grayed out because nothing appears on the Clipboard.

14. Now that you've seen the difference between the desktop items and the Clipboard, delete the scrap from the desktop by clicking the right mouse button over the scrap and selecting Delete to delete it.

Step 3: Review
This task demonstrated the differences in storage time for the Clipboard and the desktop. Before sending anything else to the Clipboard, you needed to see exactly how volatile the Clipboard is. Don't store long-term data on the Clipboard; instead, store short-term data that you want to paste to a location quickly.

Task 12.2: The Clipboard and the PrtSc Key

Step 1: Description
Here are two ways you can send screen images to the Clipboard:

Press PrtSc to send the entire graphic screen image to the Clipboard.
Press Alt+PrtSc to send only the current window's image to the Clipboard. Therefore, if you have more than one window open on your screen but want to print only one of the windows, click on that window to send the focus to it, and press Alt+PrtSc to save a copy of that window to the Clipboard.

This task demonstrates the actions of both the PrtSc and the Alt+PrtSc keystrokes.

Step 2: Action

1. Start WordPad and Paint.

2. Resize both windows so they both appear on the screen at one time.

3. Press the PrtSc key. The entire screen goes to the Clipboard.

4. If Paint is not the active window, switch to it (by clicking its window or taskbar button).

5. Select Edit | Paste (Ctrl+V) to paste the Clipboard into Paint. The Clipboard holds the graphic image of the screen, so Paint is the perfect program to work with that image. Figure 12.3 shows Paint's editing area with the screen image inside. If you want to, you can now add text callouts or make other changes to the drawing.

JUST A MINUTE: Scroll Paint's editing window to see the entire screen image.

Figure 12.3. Paint now contains a screen image.

6. Now that the image appears inside Paint, you can print the image with the File | Print command or save the image to a graphic document.

7. Resize Paint's program window so that you can once again see both the "real" WordPad and Paint windows at the same time. It does not matter if the two windows overlap. Select File | New (don't save the image) to clear Paint's editing area.

8. Click over the WordPad window or taskbar button to send the focus to the WordPad window.

9. Press Alt+PrtSc. Instead of the entire screen, only the WordPad window's image goes to the Clipboard.

10. Click over Paint's window to send the focus back to Paint, and then maximize Paint's window.

11. Press Ctrl+V to paste the Clipboard's contents into Paint. Maximize the Paint window. As Figure 12.4 shows, the Clipboard contained and transferred only the WordPad window because you pressed Alt+PrtSc instead of PrtSc.

Figure 12.4. If you press Alt+PrtSc, only the active window's image goes to the Clipboard.

12. Exit both WordPad and Paint without saving either workspace to a file.

Step 3: Review
The PrtSc key sends the entire contents of the screen to the Clipboard. The Alt+PrtSc key combination sends only the currently active window (the window with the focus) to the Clipboard.

The Clipboard Viewer

Windows 95 provides a program called the Clipboard Viewer that lets you look at whatever is on the Clipboard. Whereas you have to start Paint to see a graphic image on the Clipboard, or a text editor to see text on the Clipboard, or a sound program to hear sound on the Clipboard, the Clipboard Viewer lets you view the contents of the Clipboard no matter what format the contents take on.

The Clipboard holds whatever you cut or copy to it. Often you'll send one form of data to the Clipboard, such as a Word for Windows 6 paragraph, and then paste that data into a program that requires a different format, such as the Notepad. Windows 95 must be able to distinguish data formats and be able to convert Clipboard contents from one format to another, when applicable, so that your target location (where you'll be pasting those contents) can receive data that was originally generated in a different format. The Clipboard Viewer provides a way to view all available conversion formats of Clipboard data.

JUST A MINUTE: Generally, you will not care about the format of data on the Clipboard. Let Windows 95 worry about converting data to a required format. The Clipboard Viewer contains a Display menu option that lets you look at the conversion formats possible for the data currently on the Clipboard.

One minor drawback to the Clipboard Viewer is that the Clipboard Viewer interface supports only the Windows 3.1 controls such as the Windows 3.1 Open dialog box. Therefore, the Clipboard Viewer does not support long filenames. If you select File | Open within the Clipboard Viewer, Windows 95 squeezes long filenames down to eight characters with a tilde (~) replacing the extra characters in the long filenames.

3.1 Step Up Although the Windows 95 Clipboard viewer uses the Windows 3.1 interface, it does, however, access the MS-DOS environment more smoothly than the Windows 3.1 Clipboard. In Windows 3.1, you could copy data back and forth between MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, but doing so was a chore. Windows 95 makes the task of copying between MS-DOS and Windows 95 much more easily managed, as you'll see in Hour 14, "Activate DOS-Based Applications."

CAUTION: Depending on the actual release date of your version of Windows 95, your Windows 95 Clipboard may support the new Windows 95 interface, such as the Windows 95 Open dialog boxes explained in Hour 4, "Take Windows 95 to Task."

Task 12.3: Using the Clipboard Viewer

Step 1: Description
This task explains how to start the Clipboard Viewer and describes some of the Clipboard Viewer capabilities. The Clipboard Viewer's primary purpose is to let you look at the Clipboard whenever you want to know what is there.

JUST A MINUTE: Perhaps the only thing you cannot do with the Clipboard Viewer is print the contents of the Clipboard. If you want to print the contents of the Clipboard, you'll still have to start another program that supports the current Clipboard's contents format and use that program's File | Print command. The Clipboard Viewer's File menu contains no Print command.

Step 2: Action

1. Start the Clipboard Viewer. The Clipboard Viewer resides on the Accessories menu. When you start the Clipboard Viewer you should see the window shown in Figure 12.5.

Figure 12.5. The Clipboard Viewer displays and saves the contents of the Clipboard.

JUST A MINUTE: If the Clipboard Viewer window is not empty, the Clipboard Viewer will still contain the last contents you sent there (from the previous task, if you're following along). The next item you send to the Clipboard will appear on the Clipboard Viewer's screen.

2. Press the PrtSc key to send a copy of the screen to the Clipboard. The Clipboard Viewer instantly displays the contents of the Clipboard on the Clipboard Viewer window.

3. Maximize the Clipboard Viewer window.

4. Display the File menu. The Clipboard Viewer files that you load and save use the .CLP filename extension. Press Esc to close the File menu.

5. The Edit menu contains a single command, Delete (Del), with which you can erase the contents of the Clipboard.

6. The Display command changes depending on the contents of the Clipboard. If the Clipboard contains a screen print image, as yours does now, your Display menu contains three commands: Auto, Bitmap, Palette and DIB Bitmap. Generally, you'll leave Auto selected. With Auto, you let the Clipboard Viewer program determine the best format for the Clipboard contents. The Clipboard uses this automatic format when pasting the Clipboard contents to other applications. If you want to override the default, you can select a different format.

CAUTION: The Clipboard Viewer rarely, if ever, makes a wrong guess as to the proper format of Clipboard data. Unless you know specifically that the Clipboard is pasting data using an invalid format for the target program, don't change the Display command from the Auto selection.

Use the Clipboard Viewer's Display menu when the Clipboard contains data that Windows 95 can convert to various formats (most text can be converted to several different formats). Most of the formats will be grayed because the Clipboard Viewer will not let you convert the Clipboard contents to a data format that you cannot see on the screen. (These are internal formats usable by the Clipboard and other programs but not displayable on the screen.)

7. Select File | Exit to terminate the Clipboard Viewer program.

JUST A MINUTE: Even though you exit the Clipboard Viewer, the contents of the Clipboard do not go away. Keep in mind that the Clipboard Viewer and the Clipboard are two different entities. The Clipboard holds whatever Windows 95 data you copy or cut and the Clipboard Viewer lets you view those contents.

Step 3: Review
The Clipboard Viewer is a Windows 95 applet program that lets you view, change the format, or delete the contents of the Windows 95 Clipboard. The Clipboard Viewer does not let you print the Clipboard's contents, but you can view the contents without knowing in advance what data format the Clipboard contains.

Windows Minute

Linking with Paste Special

Windows 95 supports the use of a Clipboard link, which means that when you paste Clipboard contents into a document, Windows 95 sets up a link from one application to another. You saw a similar concept when you worked with an OLE object in the previous chapter.

If the Windows 95 application supports linked objects (not all applications support linked objects), there will be a Paste Special command on the Edit menu when you paste Clipboard data to the application. Once pasted, you can click on that pasted object to edit the object inside the application.

One of the best advantages to using Paste Special is that some advanced applications support advanced linking so that when data in the first application changes, the pasted data also changes.

Summary

This chapter reviewed the Clipboard so that you could familiarize yourself with the workings of the Clipboard Viewer. The Clipboard Viewer lets you view the contents of the Clipboard no matter what kind of data the Clipboard contains. Not only can you view the contents of the Clipboard, but you can also save the Clipboard to a file and load that file back into the Clipboard Viewer at a later time.

One of the most interesting uses of the Clipboard is for printing the contents of screens. The PrtSc key sends the screen's graphic image to the Clipboard. The Alt+PrtSc keypress sends a graphic image of the selected window to the Clipboard. Using the Clipboard Viewer, you can view the contents of the screen. If you paste the contents of the Clipboard screen into a graphic program such as Paint, you can also print the contents of the screen image.

Without the Clipboard Viewer, you would have to know the format of Clipboard data if you wanted to look at the Clipboard's contents. Depending on the source of the Clipboard data, you may not know exactly what kind of data resides on the Clipboard. The Clipboard Viewer's Display menu contains a list of all supported formats that you can convert the Clipboard data to.

Workshop

Term Review

applet A Windows 95 utility program such as the Clipboard Viewer.

Clipboard Viewer A Windows 95 applet that lets you look at the contents of the Clipboard no matter what kind of data resides on the Clipboard.

link Pasted Clipboard contents with which Windows 95 keeps an active connection. If you change linked data in its original application, after you have pasted it elsewhere from the Clipboard, the data then also changes inside the other application(s) containing the pasted contents.

Q&A

Q Is the Clipboard a file?
A Perhaps the best way to think of the Clipboard is as a section of Windows 95 memory that Windows 95 sets aside to hold one thing at a time. Although Windows 95 might use a file for the Clipboard data, at times, you don't have access to this file directly. By using the Clipboard Viewer, however, you can save the contents of the Clipboard to any file you specify.

Q How can I print the contents of my screen?
A Use PrtScr to send an image of the entire screen to the Clipboard. Once it is on the Clipboard, you can start a graphics program, such as Paint, to receive the contents and print the screen. In addition, you also can save the screen's image to a graphics file using Paint, in case you want to save the image for use in a tutorial or presentation.

Q Why would I ever need the Clipboard Viewer?
A The Clipboard Viewer lets you look at the contents of the Clipboard. It also lets you save the contents of the Clipboard to a data file. Without the Clipboard Viewer, you would have to know the exact format of the Clipboard, and then you would have to start a program that supports that format if you wanted to save or view the contents of the Clipboard.
The Clipboard Viewer lets you look at all the different conversion formats that apply to the current data on the Clipboard. You often can select a conversion format if you want to save the Clipboard contents in a file using a specific format. Most of the time, however, you will use the Clipboard Viewer just for looking at and possibly saving Clipboard contents to a disk file using the default data type.