Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint & Publisher 2007 – Format Painter

Everyone knows how to copy and paste text to in more than one document. But did you know you can do the same thing with formatting only?

The Format Painter is located on the Home tab, and it looks like paintbrush icon. When you click the Format Painter, Microsoft copies only the formatting of your selection and the cursor changes to a paintbrush.

When you click in your document, that same formatting will be applied. Your selection can be just text formatting or both text and paragraph formatting. That all depends on what you included in the selection.

If you want to keep pasting the same formatting, you can double-click the Format Painter button to make it “sticky.” When you’re finished “painting” just press Escape to release the painter.

You’ll find this tool in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher. This tool is really handy when you have a large document and you want to ensure that all your headings are the same font, size and color.

Try it next time; it will quickly become one of your favorite tools.