As a result, the transfer of data between different applications may be limited to a lower fidelity representation, like strings of text. Continuing this example, if the source provides the contact data in another format-like hCard-then the destination may not recognize the data as a contact and may not automatically create a contact using the pasted data. However, even when a source application has all of the information required to create a contact-the name, address, phone number(s), references to social media data and so on-it may not know how to format this information in a specific format that may be required by some other application. For example, the PIM application might recognize data formatted using the vCard standard. As just one example, a personal information management (PIM) application may have the ability to automatically create a contact, with the appropriate fields already populated, when the user pastes data that the PIM application recognizes as a contact. While a clipboard system may have the capability of supporting multiple formats for the same item, it is not always the case that a particular format that may be most useful for a destination is included in the format or formats provided by the source of the data. For example, a text editor may only understand and use the plain text representation, an image editing program may use the image representation, another instance of the same spreadsheet application may use the spreadsheet data, and so on. When a user pastes the spreadsheet cells into a particular application, the application may request or use a particular format. For example, for the copied spreadsheet cells, a clipboard might contain a plain text representation, a formatted text representation (in one or more of a variety of formats), an image representation, an application-specific representation that contains all of the cell information, and so on. For example, when a user copies, say, a set of cells from a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet application may place those cells on the clipboard in multiple formats. In addition to holding multiple clipboard data items, some clipboard systems have the ability to represent or contain multiple formats for a given item. Users of modern operating systems and applications may be accustomed to using a “clipboard” to copy and paste a wide variety of data between different screens and applications. 11/621,423 is a continuation-in-part of U.S. 9, 2007, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, where Ser. This application is a continuation of U.S.
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