I have finally fixed an annoying copy-paste / object-duplication issue that I’d been facing when using LibreOffice on my MX Linux computer that’s running the KDE Plasma desktop.
I figured I’d share the solution here in case others are having a similar problem (eg I know people are having this problem on LibreOffice running on Windows as well).
Fyi, I am currently using LibreOffice 26.8 on MX Linux 25.3 that’s running KDE Plasma 6.3.6, but I was having this issue in earlier versions of all those as well.
Screenshot of a text-box object on a slide in LibreOffice Impress, with an annotation showing the selection frame around this object.
The problem
Let’s say I’m using LibreOffice Impress and I want to duplicate a text-box object on my slide. What I’d normally do is:
click on the selection frame (or bounding box) around the text-box object – as shown in the screenshot above,
use the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut to copy this object to the clipboard,
then use the Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut to paste a copy of this object (ie the text box) onto the slide.
Unfortunately, that’s not what would happen.
I’d click the selection frame, use Ctrl+C to copy the text box to the clipboard, but when I’d use Ctrl+V to paste this to slide, what would get pasted is a bitmap image of the text box, not a copy of the text-box object itself.
Screenshot of a text-box object on a slide in LibreOffice Impress. Below this is a copy of this object, but in the form of an image, not an editable text-box object.
What was particularly confusing at first was that this behaviour didn’t happen every single time. Eventually I figured out the pattern, and that led me to one of the workarounds for this annoyance.
The workarounds
I found four workarounds for this problem that let me continue working with objects in LibreOffice without me tearing out the non-existent hair from my head.
1. Do it again, Sam
The quickest workaround was to simply repeat the process. (I know, I wasn’t expecting that either.)
Here’s what would happen: the first time I’d do the copy-pasting, I’d paste an image of my object to the slide – which I would immediately delete. But the second time I’d do the copy-pasting, a proper text-box object would get pasted.
I don’t know why this worked the second time around, but it did work reliably.
I tried to diagnose this as a misconfigured copy-paste setting in LibreOffice (eg paste-as-bitmap being set as the default) but I couldn’t find anything wrong with my settings. So I stopped looking any further and just used the workaround to keep things moving.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2. Ctrl+move
Another easy workaround was to select the object, press the Ctrl key on my keyboard, and while keeping that key pressed, move the object to a new position.
By keeping the Ctrl key pressed, the original object wouldn’t be moved. Instead, a duplicate of the object would be created and that would be moved to the position I’d dragged the mouse to.
Using this workaround was fine in some scenarios, but not in all of them (eg when I wanted to move the duplicated object only slightly, via the arrow keys on my keyboard).
3. Right-click with the mouse
The third workaround – and I had no idea why this worked, actually – was to use the mouse to do the copy-pasting.
I’d right-click on an object’s selection frame, then on the pop-up menu that appeared, click ‘Copy’. Next I’d right-click anywhere on the slide and, on the pop-up menu, click ‘Paste’. Doing so would reliably paste an object and not an image of the object.
I used this workaround when I had to, but as a heavy keyboard-shortcut user, it rankled every time I did.
4. Duplicate-object functionality
The final workaround I rarely used because it took an extra step and I didn’t want to have to remember a whole new keyboard shortcut for something I knew I’d resolve in the future.
In this workaround I used the duplicate-object functionality of LibreOffice. Basically, you click on an object’s selection frame and use the Ctrl+F3 keyboard shortcut. This opens a menu that lets you duplicate your object any number of times.
You use this functionality when you want to create multiple copies of your object, so it’s less efficient to use when you just want to create a single copy.
The solution
I eventually got tired of using these workarounds so I went to find the source of the problem and finally fix the issue once and for all.
Searching the internet
While this isn’t a common problem, an internet search told me that I wasn’t the only one frustrated by it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a verified source of the problem nor could I find a definitive solution that I could implement.
The closest I got was this July 2025 discussion on the ‘Ask LibreOffice’ forums in which a user declared the source of the problem to be the operating system’s clipboard manager (which, in the case of KDE Plasma, is Klipper):
If the clipboard manager doesn’t support odf format then no amount of configuration will get it to work properly except turning it off.
This was vaguely useful information but I didn’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of learning how Klipper works and how exactly it integrates with LibreOffice. So I turned to a differently-indexed knowledge base.
Asking an AI chatbot
Frustrated and not wanting to spend much more time trying to figure this out, I decided to use to my least favourite source of technical solutions: an LLM-based chatbot, which in my case was Google Gemini.
Here’s the prompt I used describe my situation:
I am using LibreOffice 26.8 on my MX Linux computer. Let’s say I’m using LibreOffice Impress. If I click on an object, such as a text box, and I press Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard and then Ctrl+V to paste this object to the slide, by default this copies a bitmap image of this object and not the text box object itself. When I repeat these steps a second time the text box gets duplicated properly. Is this a bug with LibreOffice or is there a setting I need to change to stop LibreOffice from pasting as bitmap by default the first time around? Note that this does not happen when I right-click an object and select ‘Copy’ and then right-click anywhere on the slide and click ‘Paste’. When I use the mouse, LibreOffice correctly duplicates the object. This issue only happens when using the keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. What can I do to ensure I can quickly duplicate objects using keyboard shortcuts instead of using the mouse every time?
Happily, it took only a few seconds for Gemini to explain what was happening:
This behavior is caused by a conflict between KDE Plasma’s clipboard manager (Klipper) and LibreOffice’s internal X11/Wayland selection buffer, rather than a bug native to LibreOffice itself.
When you select a object in LibreOffice Impress and press Ctrl+C, LibreOffice registers multiple formats on the system clipboard simultaneously (including native Impress drawing shapes, rich text, and a fallback PNG/BMP rendering). On the first keyboard copy, KDE’s Klipper grabs the newly registered clipboard content and defaults to synchronizing the image/bitmap stream or standard text buffer first. When you press Ctrl+V, LibreOffice receives the image stream handed back by the system clipboard and pastes it as a bitmap. On the second attempt, the clipboard buffer has already stabilized with the active selection, allowing LibreOffice to read its native object format.
Because right-clicking bypasses the global desktop clipboard capture keys and uses LibreOffice’s internal application buffer, mouse actions operate as expected.
It then presented me with three options to fix the issue, along with the steps needed to implement each solution:
Option 1: Use the Native Impress Duplicate Shortcut (Recommended)
Option 2: Adjust KDE Plasma / Klipper Clipboard Settings
Option 3: Use Paste Special via Keyboard
Option 1 was a workaround I was already aware of (it’s #4 from my list above, ie using the duplicate-object functionality) so I went with option 2:
I right-clicked the clipboard icon in the KDE system tray (ie in the bottom-right corner of my screen),
I went to the ‘Action Menu’ (from the left-side of the ‘Configure’ window that opened) and clicked the ‘Exclude Windows’ button,
In the ‘Exclude Windows’ pop-up menu I typed “libreoffice” into the text box and clicked the ‘+ Add’ button’ to add it to the exclusion list, and
I clicked two successive ‘OK’ buttons to save my configuration changes.
Screenshot of the Klipper configuration menu that’s been annotated with hand-drawn, red-coloured boxes and arrows to indicate what steps to take to change a configuration.
With this configuration change, Klipper no longer takes any actions on the objects I copy into my clipboard from LibreOffice (ie no more defaulting to copying the bitmap to its buffer the first time around). That means every object I copy from LibreOffice is pasted as itself, instead of being converted into a bitmap image of said object.
Happy days!
Since I’ve made this configuration change in Klipper, copy-pasting objects in LibreOffice has worked correctly Every Single Time.
I am so relieved!
Screenshot of a text-box object on a slide in LibreOffice Impress. Slight below, and slightly offset from this, is a copy of this object with its text colour changed to red so you can see that the duplicated text box is, indeed, a text box object and not an image.
So if you’re using LibreOffice with KDE Plasma and you’re having the same issue, I hope this helps you fix the problem!
Also, I guess a lesson to be learned here is that sometimes its okay to cognitively surrender to an LLM chatbot and just ask for an answer instead of trying to figure everything out by and for yourself. Oh well.