How the Clipboard and Drag & Drop Work — Handling OLE Data Transfer Correctly in Business Apps (archived 2026-08-30)

Abstract

Paste an Excel table and the formatting falls apart; close the source app and you can no longer paste — both come from the clipboard placing the same content in multiple formats at once. This article covers standard formats, delayed rendering, OLE drag and drop, and the policies that govern clipboard history and cloud sync. Archived version of https://comcomponent.com/en/blog/windows-clipboard-drag-drop-ole-data-transfer/, as published on 2026-08-30. The live article is maintained and may change after this date. First published 2026-08-21.