Working in Libre Office Writer 7.2.4.1, Mac OS 10.14. Clone Formatting copies only the font and font size, no matter which key combination (Option, Option-shift, Cmd, Cmd-shift, Cmd-Option, etc) I use when clicking on the Format Paintbrush. If the source paragraph is not in bold and the target paragraph is in boldface, it is not unbolded, and none of the other style attributes are applied. Is there a hidden setup step I need to take, or am I doing something wrong, or is this a problem in LO?
Thanks for that; I had seen it. It perfectly describes the way the format paintbrush used to work back in the past, at least with text (I haven’t tried it with frames, forms, etc.). But unfortunately, Writer just doesn’t work as described there, at least not on my machine. It just doesn’t copy the paragraph format at all, and it doesn’t copy every part of the text format. The previous version, 6.x, didn’t either. I’ve tested and experimented at length; no dice.
I’ve looked around for a switch or configuration setting but haven’t found anything that made a difference in the format cloning. If I’m overlooking something, I’d love to learn about it.
No change in behavior in Safe mode.
It could also indicate that you are using different formatting methods on your document.
I can understand the behavior you describe if the paragraph with boldface was done by character formatting (styles).
Using the formatting brush is a direct formatting method.
When writing larger documents, to keep track of formatting, you should work exclusively with style sheets.
Try to understand the advantages of formatting with styles.
Professional text composition with Writer
It is not possible to make any further statements about the problem you have without a sample document. You could upload it here.
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Understood about style sheets and longer documents. I’m working on a very short document based on a simple template that I’ve used for a long time.
I tried to open LO in Terminal with a test profile, to see what that produced. But the line in the documentation didn’t work:
open LibreOffice.app -env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/test
It returned open: invalid option – : I haven’t puzzled out what that means or what I should change in the command.
Please upload a sample file here, in which the problem is present.
To upload:
Click on the three dots ( … ) directly below your initial question.
Then click the pencil icon to edit your question.
In question edit mode, select the upload icon. 
Select your file and click the Upload button.
File uploaded, just above.
It could be a compatibility problem between ODT and DOC.
Basically:
Recommendation for clean working with LibreOffice when different Office programs are used.
Always create and save your files in LibreOffice and save them in ODF format (ODT, ODS, etc.).
Always keep these files as their source.
If you need other formats for distribution to partners, you can open an ODF file and save and distribute another format with ″ Save as… ″.
This way, you always have working files available in your system environment.
See:
Edit different file formats in LibreOffice
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Please report the behavior as a bug in Bugzilla .
See also:
How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice Please announce the link from the bug here.
To do this, edit your initial question. Thank you.