Private Data Formats

Advanced > Understanding Clipboard Formats > Private Data Formats

There is an established and publicized list of standard Clipboard formats, which are known as public formats.  Most of the popular ones are listed above.  Applications may generate their own private formats at any time.  Public formats are the most useful, because they are usually supported by a wide variety of applications.  Examples are Text, BITMAP, and PICTURE.  Private formats, on the other hand, are generally useless to any application besides the application that created the data.  Sometimes several applications from the same vendor will share private formats, which makes them more useful.  Most often, the data is only useful to the application that created it.

Since most private formats are usually meant to be used only by the originating application, there is a potential hazard involved when using them.  Often, these formats are just pointers that refer to data structures residing within the original application, and don't actually contain the data at all.  These are transient formats. If ClipMate re-posts this format to the Clipboard at a later time, the pointers are invalid.  This can cause a run-time Error or GPF in the original application.  If you find that this is the case, you'll have to remove the offending format(s) from the filter for that application.

WordPerfect Text, Ami Text

These are private formats that are useful only within the originating application, but they are often useful to have, as they preserve the formatting information.  If you intend to paste back into the original application, and want formatting preserved, these may work well for you.  But if you want to paste into other applications, use the more widely-supported Rich Text Format.