Where Clip can't paste, and what to do instead
How Clip by Zaweba pastes, why it can't paste into programs run as administrator, and what happens to spreadsheet cells in your history.
Pasting from Clip by Zaweba works in a straightforward way, and knowing how it works explains the few places where it can't. None of them lose your data. In each case there's a simple way round.
How a paste happens
When you choose an item in the popup and press Enter, Clip does two things. It puts the item on the Windows clipboard, and it sends Ctrl+V to the window you were using before the popup opened. The program you were in sees an ordinary paste, just as if you'd pressed Ctrl+V yourself.
That's why it works in almost every program without any special support. It's also why there are a couple of exceptions.
Programs running as administrator
Windows doesn't let a normal program send keystrokes into a program that's running as administrator. It's a security rule, and it applies to Clip like everything else. So if you open the popup over an elevated program, such as a command prompt or an installer started with Run as administrator, Clip can't send the Ctrl+V.
The item still goes on the clipboard, though. Press Ctrl+V yourself in the elevated program and it pastes. So the routine becomes: open the popup, pick the item, press Enter, then press Ctrl+V. One extra key.
If you spend a lot of time in elevated programs, it helps to remember that the clipboard is the bridge. Anything you copy from the popup, or copy from the History page in the main window, is ready for a manual paste.
Spreadsheet cells
When you copy cells in a spreadsheet, the program puts several versions on the clipboard, including its own private format that carries formulas and cell details. Clip keeps the parts that travel well: text, RTF, HTML or a picture. It doesn't keep the spreadsheet's own object.
In practice, pasting copied cells from your history into a document, an email or a web form gives you the values and formatting you'd expect. Pasting them back into a spreadsheet gives you the values, not the original formulas. If you need the formulas, copy them again from the spreadsheet and paste straight away with Ctrl+V.
Plain text when the format fights you
Sometimes the destination accepts a paste but makes a mess of it, bringing in a web page's fonts or a document's colours. Shift+Enter in the popup pastes plain text only, with no fonts, colours or links, and the main window has Copy as plain text. It's often the quickest fix for a paste that looks wrong.
The previous window matters
Because Clip pastes into the window you were using before the popup opened, open the popup from the place you want to paste into. Click into the text box first, then press the hotkey. If you open the popup and then click somewhere else, the paste goes where you clicked last, which may not be where you meant.
The popup opens at the mouse pointer, kept inside the monitor, so a good habit is to put the pointer near where you're typing before you press the hotkey.
When nothing seems to happen
If an item doesn't appear where you expected, try Ctrl+V. The item will almost always be on the clipboard, ready. If Clip isn't recording at all, check the tray icon: grey with a pause mark means recording is paused.
These limits are small and the workarounds are quick. For everything else, Clip by Zaweba simply pastes.
