How to handle a blocked clipboard and other oddities

Question

Over the course of the last couple of hours I have been tracking down a fairly specific bug with that occurs because another application has the clipboard open. Essentially

Answer 1

By making use of Jeff Roe's code (Jeff's Code)

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetOpenClipboardWindow();

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern int GetWindowText(int hwnd, StringBuilder text, int count);

private void btnCopy_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    try
    {
        Clipboard.Clear();
        Clipboard.SetText(textBox1.Text);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        string msg = ex.Message;
        msg += Environment.NewLine;
        msg += Environment.NewLine;
        msg += "The problem:";
        msg += Environment.NewLine;
        msg += getOpenClipboardWindowText();
        MessageBox.Show(msg);
    }
}

private string getOpenClipboardWindowText()
{
    IntPtr hwnd = GetOpenClipboardWindow();
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(501);
    GetWindowText(hwnd.ToInt32(), sb, 500);
    return sb.ToString();
    // example:
    // skype_plugin_core_proxy_window: 02490E80
}

you are able to handle the error in a pretty handy way.

I have managed to reduce the frequency of the error by making use of System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard Instead of System.Windows.Clipboard.

I stress that this doesn't fix the problem but it has reduced the occurrence for my application.