Xceed DataGrid for WPF supports clipboard copy support, which places the contents of the rows selected in the datagrid control and the details (the SelectedItems) into the clipboard using the formats contained in the ClipboardExporters property, in the visible order. Once the content has been placed in the clipboard, the Paste Special command in applications supporting this feature can be used to choose which format is used for the Paste operation.

By default, ClipboardExporters contains four ClipboardExporterBase objects. Two CsvClipboardExporter objects represent the comma-separated value format, "CSV," and the tab-separated value format, "Text," respectively. A UnicodeCsvClipboardExporter object represents a comma-separated value format supporting Unicode . Finally, an HtmlClipboardExporter object is used to export the data in a table, using the following tags: <Table><TR><TD></TD></TR></Table>.

The IncludeColumnHeaders property can be used to control whether the header of each master/detail will be placed included when copying to the clipboard. 

The copy command is bound to ApplicationCommands.Copy (see Example 1). After the copy command has been executed, the content is available in the clipboard in the formats present in the ClipboardExporters property at the time of the copy. Only the formatted data supported by a given application will be available when using Paste Special in the application. For example, after executing the copy command using the default clipboard exporters in ClipboardExporters, the content can be pasted into Excel (using Paste Special) using the CSV format, among others, while in Word, this format is not available. To prevent a copy from occurring, call the Clear method on ClipboardExporters.

Once the datagrid has been initialized, various properties of the clipboard exporters can be modified (see Example 2).

Dragging

When the AllowDrag property is set to true, selected rows can simply be dragged to a target host, such as Excel, in order to copy the data directly without performing an explicit copy/paste.

Examples

All examples in this topic assume that the grid is bound to the Orders table of the Northwind database, unless stated otherwise.

Example 1: Copying to the clipboard

<!—Button bound to the ApplicationCommands.Copy with DataGridControl as CommandTarget -->
<Button Command="ApplicationCommands.Copy"
        CommandTarget="{Binding ElementName=testGrid}"
        Content="Start Test" />
<Grid MaxHeight="800">
   <xcdg:DataGridControl x:Name="testGrid"
                         ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource cvs_Data}}"
                         ItemScrollingBehavior="Immediate"
                         Height="400" />
</Grid>

' Where testGrid is the DataGridControl. This sends the RoutedCommand Copy 
' to the DataGridControl so that the control can handle it.
ApplicationCommands.Copy.Execute(Nothing, Me.testGrid)

// Where testGrid is the DataGridControl. This sends the RoutedCommand Copy 
// to the DataGridControl so that the control can handle it.
ApplicationCommands.Copy.Execute( null, this.testGrid ); 

Example 2: Modifying a clipboard exporter's properties

Dim htmlExporter As HtmlClipboardExporter = TryCast(Me.testGrid.ClipboardExporters(DataFormats.Html), HtmlClipboardExporter) 
htmlExporter.IncludeColumnHeaders = True
htmlExporter.FormatSettings.DateTimeFormat = "f"
htmlExporter.FormatSettings.NumericFormat = "0.0000"

HtmlClipboardExporter htmlExporter = this.testGrid.ClipboardExporters[ DataFormats.Html ] as HtmlClipboardExporter;
htmlExporter.IncludeColumnHeaders = true;
htmlExporter.FormatSettings.DateTimeFormat = "f";
htmlExporter.FormatSettings.NumericFormat = "0.0000";