title: Using a reference to create a new object in python
body: <p>I think that this is a pure Python &quot;problem&quot; but some context is needed:</p>
  <p>I'm creating a simple Python script to modify ods documents with the library <a href="https://pythonhosted.org/ezodf/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ezodf</a>.
  Ods files are similar to Excel documents: a table containing cells that contain value, format, etc.
  The source comes from a template that I can't edit since I don't have the access to it and I need new cells with the same format as the ones I have but creating them with ezodf is not an option.</p>
  <hr />
  <p>Let's work just with column &quot;A&quot; to simplify</p>
  <p>I want cell[&quot;A5&quot;] to be a copy of cell[&quot;A3&quot;] but if I do
  <code>cell[&quot;A5&quot;] = cell[&quot;A3&quot;]</code>
  the cell &quot;A3&quot; <em><strong>moves</strong></em> to &quot;A5&quot; instead of filling cell &quot;A5&quot; with a copy and I can no longer access &quot;A3&quot;</p>
  <p>My question is, what can I do to assign a cell[&quot;A5&quot;] to a copy of &quot;A3&quot; instead of assigning it to &quot;A3&quot;?</p>