Copy and paste not working in Remote Desktop — restart rdpclip and check redirection

When copy and paste stops working in a Remote Desktop session, restart rdpclip.exe on the server. It is the small program that carries the clipboard between your computer and the server, and it is what hangs. End it, start it again, and the clipboard is back without disconnecting. If copy and paste never worked at all, something is switching it off: either the Clipboard option in your RDP client or a policy on the server.

taskkill /IM rdpclip.exe /F
rdpclip.exe

Run that inside the RDP session, or do the same by hand: Task Manager → Details → rdpclip.exe → End task, then Win+R → rdpclip → Enter. Try a paste right away; no reconnect is needed. Everything below applies to Windows Server 2025, 2022 and 2019, and to Windows 10 and 11 as the remote machine.

How do I restart the clipboard without reconnecting?

The two lines above work in most cases. There is one catch on a server that several people use: as Administrator, taskkill /IM ends rdpclip.exe in every session, so the other users lose their clipboard too until they reconnect. This PowerShell version touches only your own session:

$me = (Get-Process -Id $PID).SessionId
Get-Process rdpclip -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Where-Object SessionId -eq $me |
  Stop-Process -Force
Start-Process rdpclip.exe

If rdpclip.exe is not running at all before you start it, that is a clue rather than a fix: the clipboard channel was never opened for this connection. Restarting it will not help for long, and the cause is in one of the next two sections.

Disconnecting and reconnecting also starts the clipboard again. It takes longer, but it is the right test when the server side looks fine, because it resets your client’s end of the connection too.

Is clipboard redirection on in my client?

The clipboard is a redirection your client offers when it connects. If the client does not offer it, the server has nothing to use. Check the setting in the client you actually use:

Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc) on Windows

Click Show Options → Local Resources. Under “Local devices and resources”, tick Clipboard. For files, also click More… and tick Drives (or just the drives you want to share). Go back to the General tab and click Save, or the change is gone next time. In a saved .rdp file, the same settings are two lines you can check in Notepad:

redirectclipboard:i:1
drivestoredirect:s:*

If the box is ticked and the clipboard still never arrives, check your own PC as well. A registry value on the client blocks clipboard redirection whatever the checkbox says, and some company PCs have it set. This prints 1 when it is set and nothing when it is not:

Get-ItemPropertyValue 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client' -Name DisableClipboardRedirection -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

On your own machine, remove it from PowerShell as Administrator with Remove-ItemProperty on the same key and name, then connect again. On a managed PC, ask whoever manages it first.

Windows App or Microsoft Remote Desktop on macOS

Windows App is the current name of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client for the Mac. On the Devices tab, select the pencil icon on the PC’s card, open Devices & Audio and set the clipboard to Bidirectional. The other choices, Local to Remote Only and Remote to Local Only, are a common reason copying works in one direction only, and Disabled turns it off. To move files, open the Folders tab, tick Redirect folders and add a folder from your Mac. Inside the session, Windows App maps Cmd+C, Cmd+X and Cmd+V to copy, cut and paste, so the Mac shortcuts work on both sides. The rest of the Mac setup is in connecting to RDP from a Mac.

Remmina and FreeRDP on Linux

In Remmina, open the connection profile and make sure clipboard sync is not turned off; the checkbox is on the Advanced tab. A shared folder goes in the Basic tab. With FreeRDP on the command line, ask for the clipboard explicitly:

xfreerdp3 /v:203.0.113.10 /u:Administrator +clipboard /drive:share,/home/you/share

Replace 203.0.113.10 with your server and /home/you/share with the local folder you want to see on the server, where it shows up as share. On a distribution that still ships FreeRDP 2, the command is xfreerdp with the same options.

Is a server policy blocking the clipboard?

If the client offers the clipboard and it still never works, the server is refusing it. Open gpedit.msc and go to:

Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Remote Desktop Services → Remote Desktop Session Host → Device and Resource Redirection

• Do not allow Clipboard redirection must be Not configured or Disabled. Enabled switches the clipboard off for everyone.
• Do not allow drive redirection is the same switch for drives, and it matters when you copy files.
• Newer Windows versions also have Restrict clipboard transfer from server to client and … from client to server. If copying works in one direction only, or text works but files never do, look at these two. None of the levels they offer lets files through.

Behind these policies are registry values, and a hardening script may have set them directly without touching gpedit. Read all three places:

$pol = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services'
$usr = 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services'
$tcp = 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp'
Get-ItemProperty $pol -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object fDisableClip, fDisableCdm, SCClipLevel, CSClipLevel
Get-ItemProperty $usr -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object SCClipLevel, CSClipLevel
Get-ItemProperty $tcp | Select-Object fDisableClip, fDisableCdm

For fDisableClip (clipboard) and fDisableCdm (drives), 1 means switched off and 0 or empty means allowed. SCClipLevel limits server to client and CSClipLevel client to server: 0 blocks that direction, 1 to 4 let through text and, step by step, images, Rich Text and HTML, and empty means no limit.

If a value blocks something and gpedit.msc shows its policy as Enabled, set the policy back to Not configured there; a value removed by hand would only be written back at the next policy refresh. If gpedit.msc says Not configured and the value is still there, a script set it, and you remove it directly:

# same window as above, so $pol, $usr and $tcp are still set
Remove-ItemProperty $pol -Name fDisableClip, fDisableCdm, SCClipLevel, CSClipLevel -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Remove-ItemProperty $usr -Name SCClipLevel, CSClipLevel -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Set-ItemProperty $tcp -Name fDisableClip -Value 0
Set-ItemProperty $tcp -Name fDisableCdm -Value 0
gpupdate /force

Sign out and connect again, so that a new session picks the change up. Microsoft’s own instructions restart the server after changing these policies, so do that if a fresh session still has no clipboard. On a server in an Active Directory domain, a domain policy wins over anything you set locally; gpresult /scope computer /v shows which policy set what. If you followed our RDP hardening checklist, this is the switch you turned off there on purpose.

Why can I copy text but not files?

Text goes through the clipboard alone. Files need more, and how much depends on the client:

• From a Windows client, copying a file in Explorer and pasting it on the server works with the clipboard on. If the paste stays greyed out, enable Drives as well and make sure the server does not block drive redirection (the fDisableCdm value above). Microsoft documents that blocking drive redirection also stops files on the clipboard while text keeps working, which is exactly the “text yes, files no” symptom.
• From a Mac, Windows App copies files through the clipboard as well, with the same server-side conditions. From Linux it depends on the client and its version. Either way, for more than a few files, share a folder in the client instead (Redirect folders, or /drive: in FreeRDP) and copy from it on the server.

A redirected drive or folder appears in Explorer under This PC as “Redirected drives and folders”, and also as a network path. Your local C: drive, for example, is \\tsclient\C. For anything big, copy from that path with robocopy rather than pasting: in restartable mode (/Z) it picks up where it stopped if the connection drops.

robocopy \\tsclient\C\Users\you\Downloads C:\Data backup.zip /Z

Large files pasted through the clipboard are a common way to hang rdpclip in the first place. For gigabytes, SFTP is more reliable than any RDP channel. Windows Server 2019 and 2022 include OpenSSH Server as an optional feature, and Windows Server 2025 has it installed already. After this, WinSCP or scp on your computer can reach the server on port 22. Replace 198.51.100.7 with your own public IP:

# Windows Server 2019 and 2022 only; skip this line on Server 2025
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0

Start-Service sshd
Set-Service sshd -StartupType Automatic
# the setup adds a firewall rule for port 22; narrow it to your IP, like RDP
Set-NetFirewallRule -Name OpenSSH-Server-In-TCP -RemoteAddress 198.51.100.7

Why does copy and paste break again after a while?

Because rdpclip.exe hangs again. It tends to happen after very large copies, after copying something while the session was reconnecting, or when a clipboard manager on your own computer grabs every copy as it happens. There is no setting that cures it for good; the practical workaround is to make the restart a one-click job. Save this as C:\Scripts\restart-rdpclip.ps1:

$me = (Get-Process -Id $PID).SessionId
Get-Process rdpclip -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Where-Object SessionId -eq $me |
  Stop-Process -Force
Start-Process rdpclip.exe

Put a shortcut to it on the desktop, with this as the target: powershell.exe -NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -File C:\Scripts\restart-rdpclip.ps1. If the clipboard drops several times a day, you can also let Task Scheduler run it, for example every 30 minutes, but only while you are logged on, because it has to run inside your session:

schtasks /Create /TN "Restart rdpclip" /SC MINUTE /MO 30 /IT ^
  /TR "powershell.exe -NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -File C:\Scripts\restart-rdpclip.ps1"

A scheduled restart can interrupt a copy that is running at that moment, so prefer the shortcut if the problem is rare.

Should clipboard redirection be on at all?

It is a trade-off. While a session is open, the server can read what you copy on your own computer, and a shared drive is readable from the server too. If the server is ever compromised, that is a path from it back to you. Our checklist for securing a Windows RDP server therefore suggests turning clipboard and drive redirection off when you do not need them. On a server that only you use, many people keep the clipboard on and leave drives off, and share a folder only for the session in which they move files. On your own server, that call is yours.

Whatever you decide, do your clipboard work over RDP and keep the provider’s web console for emergencies. A VNC-style console shows the screen when RDP is down, but it is not built to carry a clipboard. The console in the VMHeaven panel has a paste field instead, which types text you paste into it on the server key by key, handy for a long password but no replacement for the clipboard. On a Windows RDP server or Windows VPS from VMHeaven you log in as Administrator, so every policy on this page is yours to change, and the console in the panel is there for the moment a change locks RDP out. If RDP does not connect at all, that is a different problem: Remote Desktop can’t connect goes through it.

Frequently asked