Formatting text for clipboard to paste into Excel

[johnnyd]

Hi,

I need to create a string containing arrows to paste into Excel.

I thought RTF would do it, but alas not.

Then I thought Unicode might do it, but not sure how to format the data.

The characters are:

chr    Unicode code

↑         2191h
↗         2197h
→         2192h
↘         2198h
↓         2193h
↙         2199h
←         2190h
↖         2196h

The full string will look like:

↑    111 222 333  444 555 666

↗    111 222 333 444 555 666

→   111 222 333 444 555 666
 ↘   111 222 333 444 555 666

↓    111 222 333 444 555 666

↙   111 222 333 444 555 666

←  111 222 333 444 555 666

↖    111 222 333 444 555 666
(numeric values will change).

I use clipboard APIs to copy the data, just need help in generating the string.

Cheers,

John.

[Rod]

Googling www.vertex42.com/blog/help/excel-help/using-unicode-character-symbols-in-excel.htm

Seems to suggest that you would need to format the string to look like html code.

You might need to send the arrow html and the numeric data separately.

[Rod]

ASC v Unicode

I used Notepad to create a simple file with "Hello>end" the > being right arrow. Notepad allows Unicode characters I cut and pasted the arrow shown in your post.

I then saved the file as ASC and also as Unicode. This is the ASC print of both files.

ASC File
72
101
108
108
111
13
10
63
13
10
101
110
100


Unicode file
255
254
72
0
101
0
108
0
108
0
111
0
13
0
10
0
152
33
13
0
10
0
101
0
110
0
100
0


So you would need to create an ASC string mimicking Unicode string. If I CtrlC and CtrlV into Excel I get the arrow character. What might get in the way is the API call it may balk at the "0" in the file as it sees that as an ASC string terminator. There might be a version of the API that will cope with Unicode. MSDN will answer that.

[johnnyd]

Hi Rod & cheers for the reply & help.

I had a flash of inspiration after seeing a clipboard viewer program, so downloaded one, copied the contents of a Word file containing the format I need and looked at the Unicode info.

I then created a text string in the program to mimic this and et voila - it worked!

There was one change to make to the API call to tell the clipboard to be Unicode which deals with the chr$(0)'s

I'm now happy.

John.