Thread: Create a Shortcut to Easily View the Windows Clipboard

Have you ever surprised what is on your clipboard? Of course you can open up notepad and try and paste it in, but there is an easy utility built into Windows XP that you can use the contents of the clipboard to view.

Today we will show you how to make a shortcut to this utility, and even how to use it in Vista if you contain an old XP installation laying around.

Create Clipboard Shortcut In XP

First right click an empty area on the Desktop and choose New \ Shortcut.



Next, type in “%windir%\System32\clipbrd.exe” without the quotes and click next.



You will then be asked to name the shortcut and continue. once you are complete anytime you want to check what is on the Clipboard just double-click the shortcut.



Enable Clip Book Viewer In Vista

Vista does not contain the same executable program as in XP, so to enable this feature in Vista we require to copy clipbrd.exe from XP into the C:\Windows\System32 directory in Vista as shown below.

Now we can go forward and make a shortcut to the Clipboard in Vista. The steps are very similar to XP; first make a new Shortcut on the Desktop.



Next enter the path to clipbrd.exe which is in C:\Windows\System32\clipbrd.exe and click Next.



Create a name for the shortcut you will easily memorize then press the Finish button. Click OK through the outstanding windows to get back to the Desktop.



Taking the idea for another Clipboard article as an extra tip we can change the icon to a Clipboard. To perform this just right click the icon, go to Properties, and Change Icon then browse over to the included icon in Windows.

Now when we double click our icon we will have access to the ClipBook Viewer.



If you do not have a working XP machine to copy the file you can use an XP installation disk.

Open a command prompt and go to the I386 folder and type the following command to the compressed file on the CD-extract, the alignment of the path, depending on your configuration.

extract D:\i386\clipbrd.ex_ c:\filepath\clipbrd.exe
Alternatively, if you are using the excellent 7-Zip utility, you can simply browse to the file location and right-click to "Open Archive" in 7-Zip…

Otherwise, if the superb 7-Zip utility, you can just browse to the file location and right click on "Open Archive" in 7-Zip.



Then you can drag the real file from here to wherever you would like.