By default, you can copy and paste from the client system to a remote desktop or published application. You can also copy and paste from a remote desktop or published application to the client system, or between two remote desktops or published applications, if a Horizon administrator enables these features.

The following data formats are supported.

  • CF_BITMAP
  • CF_DIB
  • CF_HDROP (file type)
  • CF_UNICODETEXT
  • Biff12
  • Art::GVML ClipFormat
  • HTML Format
  • RTF (Rich Text Format)

For example, to copy text on the client system, select the text and press Ctrl+C. To paste the text into a remote desktop, press Ctrl+V in the remote desktop.

If you use the VMware Blast display protocol or the PCoIP display protocol, a Horizon administrator can configure this feature so that copy and paste operations are allowed only from the client system to a remote desktop or published application, or only from a remote desktop or published application to the client system, or both, or neither.

A Horizon administrator configures the ability to copy and paste by setting agent group policies. Depending on the Horizon server and agent version, a Horizon administrator might also be able to use group policies to restrict clipboard formats during copy and paste operations, or use Smart Policies to control the copy and paste behavior in remote desktops. For more information, see the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document.

If you are connected to a Horizon 7 version 7.0 or earlier server, the clipboard can accommodate 1 MB of data for copy and paste operations. If you are connected to a Horizon 7 version 7.0.1 or later server, the clipboard memory size is configurable for both the server and the client. When a PCoIP or VMware Blast session is established, the server sends its clipboard memory size to the client system. The effective clipboard memory size is the lesser of the server and client clipboard memory size values.

The copy and paste feature has the following limitations.

  • You cannot copy and paste files between a remote desktop and the file system on the local client computer.
  • If you are copying formatted text, some of the data is text and some of the data is formatting information. If you copy a large amount of formatted text or text and an image, when you attempt to paste the text and image, you might see some or all the plain text, but no formatting or image. This problem occurs because the three types of data are sometimes stored separately. For example, depending on the type of document, images might be stored as images or as RTF data.
  • If the text and RTF data together use less than the maximum clipboard size, the formatted text is pasted. Often, the RTF data cannot be truncated, so that if the text and formatting use more than the maximum clipboard size amount, the RTF data is discarded, and the plain text is pasted.
  • If you are unable to paste all the formatted text and images that you selected in one operation, you might need to copy and paste smaller amounts in each operation.