Monday, June 20, 2022

How to Copy data from PowerShell Commandline to Clipboard

I discovered that we can copy the results of a DOS/PowerShell command directly to the Windows Clipboard. It is possible to use the pipe operator for this purpose.

How to copy ipconfig data to clipboard PowerShell command

ipconfig /all | clip

Copy from commandline ipconfig to clipboard


The pipe-sign will pipe the output of the ipconfig command over to the clipboard, from where you can paste it into any text editor you choose, such as Notepad, Notepad++, or VS Code.

How to copy present working directory console output to the clipboard using Windows PowerShell

You can use this technique in combination with various commands, including the PWD(Present Working Directory) command i.e.

pwd | clip

Copy present working directory to clipboard from PowerShell commandline


If you want to copy some random text over to the clipboard, it is also possible.

How to copy random text to clipboard using PowerShell

echo "Copy this" | clip

Copy any text co clipboard from cmd or Windows PowerShell


How to clear Windows clipboard from PowerShell command

If you want to clear the clipboard, you can pass an empty string through the echo using the following syntax:

echo "" | clip

Clear clipboard Windows Powershell Commandline command


Another PowerShell command to clear the clip is also given below: 

echo $null | clip


You may also use the PowerShell method Get-Clipboard and Set-Clipboard in some scenarios, although I need to figure out the specific scenarios.

Sometimes, you may use the stream redirection operation for the same purpose. 

I hope you'll find this tech tip blog post useful. Feel free to share if you, too, know anything cool.

And just an "oh, by the way," I also learned about the Get-Content command today, which can be used to print the contents of a text file to the console. It has got some other sophisticated uses too. But the simplest one I've found so far is a replacement of the Linux cat command(also available in PowerShell). 


How to copy the contents of a file without opening it on Windows using PowerShell

Suppose you're on a Windows machine and want to copy the contents of a text file without opening it. Is it possible? Let me show you how to copy the contents of a file to the Windows clipboard using PowerShell.

First of all, you can use the following command to read the contents of a file:
cat

The cat command comes from Linux, widely used in the Linux world to print the contents of a file.

PowerShell Cat Command copy to clipboard

The above image shows how you can print the contents of a file on the screen using PowerShell.

Quick Tip:

If the folder is opened in Windows File Explorer, click on the path textbox and enter the word.  


PowerShell to launch PowerShell in the same folder.




You can easily pipe the results of the cat command over to the clip object representing Windows Clipboard. An example is shown below:

cat .\Login.java | clip


cat text contents of file to clip powershell command windows


All in all, I showed you the following three commands in this short blog post: 


ipconfig /all | clip

pwd | clip

echo "" | clip

cat <file-name> | clip