When I drag and drop something, or regular paste it, it automatically become the formatting of what I pasted it next to. This is really annoying.
I understand that I can paste using formatted text. But how do I make this the default? Unformatted text should be the non-default, not the other way around.
I can’t see how are you doing that, so it is difficult to guess.
Formatted text is the default when pasting (Ctrl+V, or menu Edit - Paste, or the Paste button in the Standard toolbar).
How do you paste? With keyboard shortcut? Check the keys value for the fuction Paste Unformatted Text in menu Tools - Customize - Keyboard tab.
Maybe disabbling Expand formatting? Sorry, I was thinking about Calc.
Any way I paste (Ctrl+V, Copy-Paste, Edit-Paste) yields this same result.
The result depends on how your existing text is formatted. You have three formatted layers: paragraph, character, direct formatting. When you paste, the added block brings with it its own formatting. But if one of the layers has no explicitly added formatting, it inherits from the layer immediately preceding it.
This causes generally no issue when you format with styles because it is rather consistent and easy to observe. But if you proceed with direct formatting (apparently easier for newbies because Word offers no other alternative), the manually forced formatting in effect at location of paste will override the pasted block when the latter has no direct formatting of its own.
To fix, be consistent with your formatting and use exclusively styles. This will not remove all inheritance situations but really reduce them to manageable amount.
Is Styles the Heading 1/Heading 2 etc. stuff? I really hate using those…I just want to make things the size/boldness/italics that I want and for it to stay that way when I paste.
Is there simply way to change this in LibreOffice?
There are possibilities to simplify paste unformatted, but as inherited styles were already explained above and you emphasized hating styles, I guess the best suggestion is to use a simple program for your text. (Maybe like the old WordPad on Windows… Today maybe an Editor for Markdown would be an option, but even theese know “heading1”…)
Ok, then is there a way to change this with styles?
It seems like whichever one I use, the same thing happens.
Nearly all modern document processors are based on “styles” or equivalent concept. Even if they offer a “direct formatting” (= no style) alternative, this alternative is just worth for quick’n’dirty experimenting to see the effect of such and such feature or setting. Anyway, styles are always present in the background and direct formatting interact with them nolens volens (Latin expression for “either you want or not”).
So, your best approach is to learn styles, at least to know how your direct formatting will impact the result. Note that styles offer you much more power than direct formatting and a tremendous comfort when it comes to appearance tuning.
For a very superficial introduction to styles, read the Writer Guide. What is not stated in this guide is: styles are not shortcuts for a collection of typographical attributes; they are an integral part of author’s job as they are used to markup the semantic value of paragraphs, words, pages or any other objects. Consequently, you don’t name them “bold”, “italics”, “red” but Heading n for chapter titles, “commentary”, Emphasis, Strong Emphasis, “important”, … Then you give these styles typographical attributes. You may have Emphasis and “quotation” end up visually the same as italics but the corresponding text are distinctively marked up, which means you can reliably change “quotation” for bold blue instead of italics without even the need to check you have no false change.
This is more professional. You may find it “heavy” in the beginning while you learn how to use it but soon you’ll find it an invaluable tool and a real boosting method of typing documents.