hello there
something weird happened this morning ...
when i copy a path, and paste it into a new file it became an image....
anyone an idea what went wrong??
how to cure it?

If you are using a mac, it may be a setting.

On windows, it may be a keyboard mistake: alt-B makes a bitmap copy of an object.

Thanks..i work in Windows but I never use shortcuts..did it by clicking the icons...

I'd be curious if it was an SVG file that you copied from, or other format. Or was it just a drawing in Inkscape that hasn't been saved in any format yet?

You're sure what you copied was actually a path? I know I've gotten Trace Bitmap results mixed up with the original raster before.

Aarg! Something is nagging me, and I know I've heard this problem before (where it wasn't the Mac bug), and I just can't bring it into focus. Still trying to remember something....

Was it something set to optimized or not optimized.....??

Here's a bug report where someone says that closing and reopening the Inkscape instance that you copy to does fix it (as a workaround):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1125631

here's another one:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1480686 (without workaround), probably a duplicate?