Solved Copy/Paste Problem in LibeOffice Writer

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm learning how to use LibreOffice in Win 7. I'm used to being able to copy web articles, text and images, by copying them to the clipboard, then pasting them into a MS Word doc. However, when I try to do that with LibreOffice Writer, only the text shows up; the images are replaced with large boxes.

What do I need to do to be able to copy and paste web articles into LibreOffice Writer? This is driving me nuts (no short trip cracks, please)!

 

[billmcct]

I have no problem pasting full web pages into LibeOffice Writer. I'm using the portable version and have for the last 5 years. Did you install the help file? May find an answer there. Download LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Fun Project - Fantastic People

 

[mrjimphelps]

Make sure that the images have been selected on the web page before you issue the copy command. The fact that you get a box when you paste them tells me that something was selected and copied from the web page, but maybe the actual image itself wasn't copied. Perhaps the image was showing from some other website rather than from the website you were looking at, and it therefore didn't copy successfully.

Try right-clicking only on the image, then choose Copy. Then paste that into your document. I believe that by specifically copying only the image, you will be more successful in copying and pasting the image from the web page to your document.

Finally, if none of that works, use Snipping Tool to grab the image, then copy and paste from there to your document. The thing I like about Snipping tool is that it is likely that it is grabbing only the image, not any of the meta information bundled in with the image. In other words, the image it grabs is a pure image, nothing more.

Good luck!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I have no problem pasting full web pages into LibeOffice Writer. I'm using the portable version and have for the last 5 years. Did you install the help file? May find an answer there. Download LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Fun Project - Fantastic People

How the heck do you paste full web pages into Writer? See my next post to see what results I'm getting.

Their idiot "forum" (Ask LibO) won't let me post a question. I went through heck getting past the *&^%$#@! picture CAPTCHA (I would like to "meet" the clown who came up with that abomination!) just to register onto the site, then, when I try to ask a question, I have get past another blasted picture CAPTCHA which has the instructions on what I'm supposed to click on in some foreign language, leaving me to guess what they want, then when I hit the post button, it bounces me back to the misbegotten CAPTCHA again. :mad2:

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Make sure that the images have been selected on the web page before you issue the copy command. The fact that you get a box when you paste them tells me that something was selected and copied from the web page, but maybe the actual image itself wasn't copied. Perhaps the image was showing from some other website rather than from the website you were looking at, and it therefore didn't copy successfully.

Try right-clicking only on the image, then choose Copy. Then paste that into your document. I believe that by specifically copying only the image, you will be more successful in copying and pasting the image from the web page to your document.

Finally, if none of that works, use Snipping Tool to grab the image, then copy and paste from there to your document. The thing I like about Snipping tool is that it is likely that it is grabbing only the image, not any of the meta information bundled in with the image. In other words, the image it grabs is a pure image, nothing more.

Good luck!

The image is getting copied. Here is an example of what I get when I copy part of this tutorial on Seven Forums and paste it into a blank Word doc:



It needs some minor editing, mostly cleaning up extra carriage returns, but, otherwise, it's pretty much all there and ready to go.

This is what I get when I paste the same thing into LibreOffice Writer:



What a mess! Only the first page of the article actually transferred to the document (it didn't flow over anything from the second page).

I can special paste the text only over without any formatting but then I have to manually restore the formatting, manually restore any hyperlinks, and individually copy and paste each image into the document. Instead of no more than five minutes to clean the document up, as I'm able to do in a Word doc, I could easily spend half an hour or more doing the same in LibreOffice Writer. Surely there is a better way to do this!

 

[mrjimphelps]

Word is a much more capable program than Libre Office Writer. Microsoft has a paid staff who work full time making sure Word is up to snuff. Libre Office, on the other hand, is a community effort. It is obvious that the Libre Office folks haven't spent nearly the amount of time as the Word folks in bringing their program up to snuff.

That's the problem with open-source, free software like Libre Office.

Therefore, you'll have to go through extra steps to get this done with Libre office. Have you tried the things I suggested, and did they work?

Whenever I want to copy a web page into a Word document, I always copy the text first, then I get the pictures. However, this often means that I can get only a little bit at a time. But the good part is, the resulting document is always exactly the way I want it to be.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Screen shots are not an option since they aren't editable (short of cropping and resizing). Obviously, hyperlinks will not work. Also, they are a pain in the neck to copy and paste piecemeal.

I've already stated that copying the text first, then reformatting, then copying and pasting each image is a time consuming pain in the neck (actually, the pain is about 2' lower).

I wouldn't put the Libre Office folks down on the time they spent on LibreOffice. There is lot one can do in LibreOffice that one can't do in MS Office, particularly Writer vs. Word (I haven't spent much time working with Calc, LibreOffice's version of Excel although, so far, it has done everything I've wanted from it; I haven't tried the other programs yet since I have had little need for them yet). I'm finding it hard to believe that Writer is incapable of handling something so simple. LibreOffice is a highly sophisticated program but its GUI, even if it looks similar to MS Office, is actually quite different (I ran into the same thing while first learning to use PDF Studio Pro 12 as a replacement for Adobe Acrobat Standard XI; it actually is simpler to use and does much more than Acrobat but, despite its similarities in appearance, it is quite different).

Btw, Have you actually used LibreOffice?

 

[mrjimphelps]

Have you actually used LibreOffice?

LOL!

I use it all the time on my Xubuntu Linux computer; however, I haven't spent any time to speak of in the Windows version.

But I haven't tried to save web pages in LibreOffice.

 

[iko22]

I'm learning how to use LibreOffice in Win 7. I'm used to being able to copy web articles, text and images, by copying them to the clipboard, then pasting them into a MS Word doc. However, when I try to do that with LibreOffice Writer, only the text shows up; the images are replaced with large boxes.

What do I need to do to be able to copy and paste web articles into LibreOffice Writer?

I think the "Large Boxes" that you are refering to, are called Sections in Libre Office. They seem to be evident in any non-native file conversion, when converting to the Libre Office format. The Sections are inserted into the document, even if you just copy and paste a paragraph of text, from a web page.

After pasting an article's clipboard contents into Writer, had you tried Preview in Web Browser? When I tried this, both text and images were present and correctly aligned, even if the editor was displaying gloopy blank boxes.

Hadn't the time to try zeroing margins and customising the page format to 16 x 9 ratio.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I think the "Large Boxes" that you are refering to, are called Sections in Libre Office. They seem to be evident in any non-native file conversion, when converting to the Libre Office format. The Sections are inserted into the document, even if you just copy and paste a paragraph of text, from a web page.

After pasting an article's clipboard contents into Writer, had you tried Preview in Web Browser? When I tried this, both text and images were present and correctly aligned, even if the editor was displaying gloopy blank boxes.

Hadn't the time to try zeroing margins and customising the page format to 16 x 9 ratio.

Where would I find preview in Web Browser?

 

[ethel]

Hi Lady Fitzgerald, The below link has a section about preview in a browser, just something to look at.


.

5.2 Simplify Libre Writer - Learn Linux and LibreOffice
https://www.learnlinuxandlibreoffice.org/.../5-2-simplify-libre-writerhttps://www.bing.com/search?q=libre...39&sk=&cvid=312E01DBEB124B72BD8534C27ED0E80C#

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hi Lady Fitzgerald, The below link has a section about preview in a browser, just something to look at.


.

5.2 Simplify Libre Writer - Learn Linux and LibreOffice
https://www.learnlinuxandlibreoffice.org/.../5-2-simplify-libre-writer

Oh, WOW! That is a gold mine. I've saved My Precious the link. Thank you so much!



However, I'm going blind in my old age. I couldn't find the reference about
preview in a browser.

Never mind, I found it. Old age sucks! I'll play with it shortly.

 

[Melchior]

I have noticed a similar issue with Calc.... every so often it gets stuck in RAM that is soffice.exe and soffice.bin
even after I close out Calc... AND it was messing UP my use of COPY/CUT and PASTE manually PASTE was NOT working
at all in Notepad 3 Firefox etc.. it seems LibreOffice is effecting the the... Windows Clipboard...
once I forcefully killed the LibreOffice process tree... the Clipboard began functioning AGAIN! lol

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I have noticed a similar issue with Calc.... every so often it gets stuck in RAM that is soffice.exe and soffice.bin
even after I close out Calc... AND it was messing UP my use of COPY/CUT and PASTE manually PASTE was NOT working
at all in Notepad 3 Firefox etc.. it seems LibreOffice is effecting the the... Windows Clipboard...
once I forcefully killed the LibreOffice process tree... the Clipboard began functioning AGAIN! lol

One thing I saw in that link ethel provided was an option to allocate more memory for the cache and per item, change the maximum number of items in the cache, and change the retention time of items in the cache. Mayhap more memory allocated may help with that. I have 32GB of RAM so, since I have plenty to work with, I upped mine to see if that might help with the copy/paste issue (it didn't ) but it might help with yours.

 

[Melchior]

One thing I saw in that link ethel provided was an option to allocate more memory for the cache and per item, change the maximum number of items in the cache, and change the retention time of items in the cache. Mayhap more memory allocated may help with that. I have 32GB of RAM so, since I have plenty to work with, I upped mine to see if that might help with the copy/paste issue (it didn't ) but it might help with yours.

Hmm.. I looked up and down that article and didn't see anything related to LibreOffice.
:/ :/
ok I figured it out the link ethel provided was corrupted..
https://www.learnlinuxandlibreoffice.org/5-benefits-of-libreoffice-writer/5-2-simplify-libre-writer
I changed my settings to 50MB too... not that I use Writer at all.. I use right now every day Calc for
my FOOD INTAKE spread sheet... and ITS an EPIC FAIL! lol
attached for review... lol

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Oh, WOW! That is a gold mine. I've saved My Precious the link. Thank you so much!



However, I'm going blind in my old age. I couldn't find the reference about
preview in a browser.

Never mind, I found it. Old age sucks! I'll play with it shortly.

Well, it's true that the images get pasted into the document since they do show up in preview in a browser but the big question now is how the big, fat, hairy heck to get them to show up un the document. Yeesh!

 

[DavidE]

Well, it's true that the images get pasted into the document since they do show up in preview in a browser but the big question now is how the big, fat, hairy heck to get them to show up un the document. Yeesh!

In the LibreOffice menu / View, click on Images and Charts.
See if that helps.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

In the LibreOffice menu / View, click on Images and Charts.
See if that helps.

Nope, I got one image (out of several) to show teeny-weeny but I couldn't enlarge it. Thanks anyway!

 

[iko22]

From a blank document, In the View menu, choose Web Layout before pasting clipboard contents onto page.



Thats shown me something too Just need to enable web layout, after all.

 

[ethel]

Hi Melchior, I was just wondering how the link Simplify Libre Writer is corrupt? Am I missing something