--- title: "How to: Perform Drag-and-Drop Operations Between Applications" ms.date: "03/30/2017" helpviewer_keywords: - "drag and drop [Windows Forms], between applications" ms.assetid: fa347436-2b12-4dd6-8507-59d7241f6a06 --- # How to: Perform Drag-and-Drop Operations Between Applications Performing drag-and-drop operations between applications is no different than enabling this action within an application, as long as both applications involved behave according to the "contract" established between the and properties. In the following procedure, you will use a Windows-based application you create and the WordPad word processor that is included with the Windows operating system to perform drag-and-drop operations between applications. WordPad has a certain set of allowed effects for text being dragged and dropped; the Windows-based application you will write code for will work with these effects so that drag-and-drop operations may be completed successfully. ### To perform a drag-and-drop procedure between applications 1. Create a new Windows Forms application. 2. Add a control to your form. 3. Configure the control to receive dropped data. For more information, see [Walkthrough: Performing a Drag-and-Drop Operation in Windows Forms](walkthrough-performing-a-drag-and-drop-operation-in-windows-forms.md). 4. Run your Windows-based application, and while the application is running, run WordPad. WordPad is a text editor installed by Windows that allows drag-and-drop operations. It is accessible by pressing the **Start** button, selecting **Run**, and then typing `WordPad` into the text box of the **Run** dialog box and clicking **OK**. 5. Once WordPad is open, type a string of text into it. 6. Using the mouse, select the text, and then drag the selected text over to the control in your Windows-based application. Observe that when you mouse over the control (and, consequently, raise the event), the cursor changes, and you can drop the selected text into the control. Additionally, you can configure your control to allow text strings to be dragged and dropped into WordPad. For more information, see [Walkthrough: Performing a Drag-and-Drop Operation in Windows Forms](walkthrough-performing-a-drag-and-drop-operation-in-windows-forms.md). ## See also - [How to: Add Data to the Clipboard](how-to-add-data-to-the-clipboard.md) - [How to: Retrieve Data from the Clipboard](how-to-retrieve-data-from-the-clipboard.md) - [Drag-and-Drop Operations and Clipboard Support](drag-and-drop-operations-and-clipboard-support.md)