Tip #24 [Word, Excel, Powerpoint]: Copy text formatting using Format Painter

what do these icons mean?

The mysterious paintbrush tool, which seems to
have done nothing so far to ease our Office tasks...

Perhaps like me, you have been wondering what that paintbrush icon in Microsoft Office is used for. I actually didn't know either, until quite recently (a few years back actually). The paintbrush tool, named the Format Painter, is used to copy and paste text formatting in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

Take note: the Format Painter lets you copy and paste (or paint/apply) formatting from one selected text to another, meaning font, size, color, background, line spacing, etc. It is different from the usual copy and paste procedure, which you will end up with a duplicate of the copied text.

How can we make use of the Format Painter to make our lives easier? Here's an example in Word.

You have typed a text about a new cleaning product named Xtra White, and you want to make all occurrences of the name "Xtra White" in your text be in the Georgia font, italic and bold in style, and blue in colour (like the one i formatted above). "Xtra White" was only mentioned twice in the text - you could manually change the font, text colour and style for the second instance, but that wouldn't be fun. What we can do, is apply the desired formatting style to one instance of "Xtra White", then click on the Format Painter tool, select the instance of "Xtra White" which has been formatted, then select the other instance which we want to apply the same formatting to. Confusing? The screencast below should make things clearer... (you need Flash for this screencast, if you don't already have it)

What if you want to apply the same formatting more than once? (e.g. if we mentioned "Xtra White" 10 times) Instead of single-clicking the Format Painter, double-click it and you will be able to select more than one chunk of text to paint. When you're done, click on the Format Painter again once to deactivate it.

And the same principle applies for Excel (copying cell formatting) and Powerpoint (copying text box formatting). If you often find yourself repetitively formatting parts of your document, Format Painter should have become your new friend by now.