Weirdness after pasting an image in Writer

English
#1

Every time I paste an image from the clipboard into Writer, the image is pasted below the cursor and I can’t move the cursor below the image unless I press Shift-Enter. This is not the experience I have when I use Word…any ideas?

The response from ajlittoz was very confusing! I believe that I shouldn’t have to play with settings to get an image to display properly and to continue editing my document. When I insert an image in Word, the cursor is correctly placed after the image and I can continue to type but in Writer, the cursor remains where it was and I can’t type after the image.

I don’t want another explanation just steps to get this app to work properly.

#2

Delete the duplicate at 295139/weirdness-after-pasting-an-image-in-writer

Also retag to remove common (meaning you experience the problem in all applications of the suite, Writer, Calc, Impress, …) and replace both tags with writer. Press `Enter twice to exit retag mode.

Images are most of the time inserted “off text”, i.e. the image is not considered as a character which is part of text flow. This means text wraps around the image in various ways. Also cursor position is not related to image (because the image is “off text”).

Don’t use Shift+Enter (line break, which is different from paragraph break = Enter) unless you know what you’re doing.

When image are inserted into a Writer document, they are hosted in a rectangular area called a frame (and this area is set off-text). You probably need to adjust the frame properties.

#3

As your question is formulated, it is impossible to give you advice for lack of information about your goal.

Edit your question to provide more details, not forgetting your OS name and LO version. On this site, answers are reserved for solutions, so don’t use “Add answer” and take care to edit the question.

#4

Writer is much more versatile and powerful than Word.It can’t guess where you want the picture be positioned. You seem to say that Word always inserts the picture as the “next character”. This is a possible option in Writer, but tell us if this is what you want or e.g. have the picture at left or right of the paragraph, top or bottom of page.

#5

I don’t want another explanation just steps to get this app to work properly.

I’m not exactly fond of how LibO Writer handles image ijnsertion…

But anyway: If you are fond of MS Word, and “work properly” Is meaning to you “as Word does”, you should use MS Word.
The contributors here are users of LibO trying to help other users. None of them is your hireling. Try it a bit less lordly.

2 Likes
#9

In LibreOffice 7.1 you can change the default image anchor point. Currently, it is anchor To character; to change the default anchor point to As character click Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > Formatting Aids then under the heading Image in the field Anchor change to As character.
Note that the image will still be selected so that you will need click after the image to carry on typing.

ChangeDefaultImageAnchor
ChangeDefaultImageAnchor1072×580 18 KB

Pasting an image will insert it as a .png, this might not be the optimum format for the image in terms of size. It is always better to Insert > Image which will insert the image in its original format. Cheers, Al

2 Likes
#10

The ability to default to ‘As Character’ makes Writer behave much more like MS Word in this respect. A relatively tiny change, but as a hardened and habitual user of MS Word (ever since Windows 3.1!) it makes a big difference. The LibreOffice 6.x that currently ships with Ubuntu 20 does not have the ‘Formatting Aids’ feature.

#11

Facing issue exactly as described here. Being forced to enter a arbitrary character (e.g. space) in order to be able to create new-line after a pasted image seems counter-intuitive.

#12

Once again, it all depends on how you want your image positioned. An image can be laid out at the current position of the cursor (the anchor mode is called As character and makes the image behave like a super big character, moving with text) or anywhere in the page (anchor modes To paragraph or As character, the difference is only meaningful in sophisticated automatic positioning). Read the manual and experiment a bit to get familiar with the effects.

One way to overcome difficulties is to use frame styles to confer preset formatting attributes to the images.

1 Like
#6

Right-click image go to bottom click on properties in type tab under anchor click to page then to bottom of page click ok this should fix the problem

#7

Never never never anchor anything To page unless you are an expert in Writer and know perfectly the consequences of such an anchor. To page is absolutely counter intuitive: it anchors an object to a specific page number, not to the page of the current text location. This text location may be moved by subsequent edits but the object will not move at all.

Anchoring to page never fixes a problem, it causes many to ordinary people. To page is meant for desktop publishing, not for flowing text document.

A possible answer to @SnowWolf’s question could be As character anchor, but he didn’t provide any clue about his goal.

2 Likes
#8

Maybe the question by @SnowWolf was not very detailed, but I experience the very same behavior.

If the cursor is at the end of the document, and one pastes an image into the document, then the image has Anchor=“to character” and clicking after the image and hitting enter moves the image down. This is counter-intuitive because one may want to enter empty lines after the image (where the cursor appears).

What helps is entering a SPACE (or any other character) and only then hitting enter, or to change the anchor to “as character”. It seems the image requires a character being entered first (and a NEWLINE does not count) to find its position, otherwise it just moves to the very end of the document. Hitting enter just moves the end of the document and with it the image.

So the “workflow” of pasting an image, hitting CTRL-ENTER to start a new page, pasting an image etc fails… one has to enter some text that acts as anchor or change the anchor type.

#13

In the image properties there is a Wrap tab. On that tab there is a click box called “Allow Overlap”. Un-check that. You can then add lines to the doc until you are below the image.

Tony

#14

Which means you are using Writer like a mechanical typewriter and practice direct formatting. This will cause many more problems than solve intrinsically the issue.

#15

I came here with the exact same issue at the OP.
My workflow today was:

  • type some text
  • take a screenshot
  • paste the screenshot in
  • type some more text

My intention was to build up the document as text, image, text, image, etc. I’m not putting all the images in at the end, I’m not doing any fancy publishing etc, just pasting screenshots.

But when I paste a screenshot and try to move the cursor to the end, nothing happens. When I type more text, it starts moving the existing images around. It becomes confusing which image relates to which text, even though I only just typed it. The arrow keys don’t work, I can’t tell what will happen when i start typing again, and usually it’s not what I’m expecting.

I eventually realised that Writer defaults to pasting images anchored ‘to character’, when what I (and I expect most other users) want, is ‘as character’. When I change to that, it all works as I expect.

But please please please… can you make that ‘as character’ the default? I have to change it every image. Sure there’s a way to change the default somewhere, I managed to find that on my other computer, but now I’ve got to go through it again.

Yes. I get it, you don’t like ‘make it like msword’ feature requests. But the current behaviour is confusing, I would argue that it’s confusing for everyone. And going by the responses on here, for no reason other than bigotry.

If there is ‘a better way to do it’, please tell me. I want a workflow where I can paste in images and keep typing, without clicking any popup menus, and for the image/text/image to then be in the document in the order that I created it.

#16

This is not at all a solution to initial question. It is in fact another question. So, please, in order not to confuse other visitors, ask your own question with an optional link to this one.

The quick solution to your problem is very easy. But for your own education a somewhat more lengthy explanation won’t hurt. If I answered right now in a comment (so that it remains related to your post), it would be lost in the whole page.

So, ask a new question and, please please, delete your “non-answer” (only you as post owner can do it).

#17

See my answer above

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