I'm trying to find a list of data formats and their respective IDs, so that I can accurately identify the most common types of objects that get dropped in an OLE Drag/Drop operation.
I'm developing an application that can handle multiple (relatively common) data types, and I'd like to find information on common IDs so that I can write code to handle them accordingly. For instance, with a very quick check, I find that an e-mail from MS Outlook, dropped into a VB Picturebox, gives four IDs - 1 (vbCFText), 13, -16370, and -16219 . The first two seem to be the same, whereas the last two seem to be more binary or, at least, more cryptic. Anyway, it's not just Outlook data objects I'm looking to understand. I'd like to be able to parse out the majority of data objects.
Anyways, any help pertaining to this stuff would be great. Thank!
Jay
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Many of the ole drag drop/clipboard formats are copyright to Microsoft. Even they had problems with this area as they forgot to internally document them. I once placed a support call with Microsoft for this issue. After I pointed out that a drop file copy did different things on Windows 95 & 98. And multiple file drags into different versions of Outlook produced strange results. After three months I learnt the the person responsible for the documentation of iData objects and this subject was a total prat!
In that case, you would be better off referring to SDK documentations.
Or could you use a tool like SPY++. Daunting, but may get you some result.
Or, the ultimate soultion. Reverse engineering. Decompile the .DLLs that control the game. ole2.dll, ole2disp.dll, ole32.dll, oleaut32.dll, olecli.dll etc.
I hope M$ is not gonna sue me about me suggesting you to decompile their DLLs :-)
Not really needed. The disassembly is all you have to understand. And a person trying to net down all MS clipboard formats may be assumed to have that level of skill. Even if you can just get to see the constants, you may make out a lot. And the data type can be had by the size of the memory location and sample values.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: RanjeetRainPosted on 2003-06-07 at 13:47:28ID: 8673779
Hi
Here is the complete list of format constants (these are all members of VBRUN.ClipBoardConstants)
Const vbCFBitmap = 2 Bitmap (.BMP file)
Const vbCFDIB = 8 Device-independent bitmap
Const vbCFEMetafile = 14 Enhanced metafile (.EMF file)
Const vbCFFiles = 15 Filename list (Microsoft Windows Explorer)
Const vbCFLink = -16640 (&HFFFFBF00) DDE conversation information
Const vbCFMetafile = 3 Metafile (.WMF file)
Const vbCFPalette = 9 Color palette
Const vbCFRTF = -16639 (&HFFFFBF01) Rich Text Format (.RTF file)
Const vbCFText = 1 Text (.TXT file)
Hope this will get you going.
~ Ranjeet Rain