Tip: Use CLIP.EXE to manage clipboard in CMD

In many cases in this forum and elsewhere, you are asked to submit screenshots of command prompt commands and their printed results.

Sometimes though, you might need the text result to be editable, rather than a jpeg image. Many users are not familiar with the QuickEdit mode of Command Prompt, or the result is too big (e.g. a /help result), so you cannot easily copy the text from the cmd window.

A tool introduced from Vista, Clip.exe, also available in W7, can make your life easier on this.
So when you are asked to post a screenshot of e.g. bcdedit command, instead of the screenshot you can post the actual cmd text results.

To do so, just type the command in command prompt followed by | clip (|=pipe)

example:

bcdedit | clip

Now your clipboard contains the bcdedit command's results.You can just paste it anywhere.

Other useful examples (for debuggin purposes):

powercfg /query | clip

ipconfig | clip

dir c:\windows\system32 | clip

etc

Limneos

hdjunkie said:

Good tip. Another easy way to get cmd.exe results to text is to simply put a carrot ">" after the command with the location of the new text file after it.
Like...
ipconfig > c:\users\public\documents\ipconfigresults.txt

Indeed, but this doesn't copy it to the clipboard. To get it copied, you will then need to open the ipconfigresults.txt, select all , copy. Clip.exe places it in the clipboard without having to open a file.

Nice tip, limneos. Thanks.

Gary

This is great, thanks Limneos.

My bcdedit output as an example.

Code:

 
 
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=D:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {9222e001-28c4-11df-8694-d031a9396882}
displayorder            {ntldr}
                        {current}
                        {aec762e2-86c1-11de-8d82-c6496531d197}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30
Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Earlier Version of Windows
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {9222e003-28c4-11df-8694-d031a9396882}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {9222e001-28c4-11df-8694-d031a9396882}
nx                      OptOut
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {aec762e2-86c1-11de-8d82-c6496531d197}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Vista 64-bit Ultimate
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=D:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {aec762e3-86c1-11de-8d82-c6496531d197}
nx                      OptOut