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Step 1 - What is the Format Painter ?

This button can be found on the Standard toolbar and can be used to quickly copy the formatting from one part of a document to another.

 Format Painter - This button copies formats from the selected cells, so they can be copied to other parts of the worksheet or workbook.

Just select the text you want to copy and press the Format Painter button.

Select the text or drag the painter over the characters you want to apply the formatting to.

It is possible to apply the formatting to non adjacent characters by double clicking on the Format Painter button.

Double click on the paint brush to copy a format to a selection of non-contiguous characters. Single click it afterwards to cancel.

To use the Format Painter, first select the text which has the format you want to copy.

Then click the Format Painter button on the Standard toolbar and select the text you want to have the same formatting.

You can select text anywhere in the document or in any other open documents.

The first time you release the mouse pointer, the formats are applied to the text you selected.

That means some ways of selecting the text work with the mouse pointer and others don’t.

For example you can drag your mouse pointer across the text to select it for format painting

However if you click on a new location intending to select the text with the keyboard shortcut, this will not work.

The Format Painter copies all font formatting including underlining, emboss, outline, character spacing as well as animation.

If you also include the paragraph mark (at the end of a paragraph) then all the paragraph formatting will be copied as well.

If you plan to reuse the format a lot throughout your document then it will be quicker to create a style in the long run.

Step 3 - Things to Remember