Have you ever gotten the formatting perfect in one section of a document and wished you could copy and paste that format elsewhere in the document? You can! The Format Painter tool in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint does exactly that. This fantastic feature is also available in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Why Would I Need Format Painter?
When I write, I put very little formatting in the rough draft. I use headings and bullets, but I let them be whatever style the default template inserts. That can make for a very boring finished document, though, so I often go back and insert some styling to make the document more eye-catching. Depending on the length of the document, changing each element to the new style (fonts, colors, bullets, etc.) can be a time-intensive process.
The image below shows sample checklists for someone writing a blog post. The first block shows the default styling. In the second block, I changed the color and weight of the heading, the bullet shape and color, and the item font:
To make the first block look like the second, I could go back and check the fonts and colors of all the elements and change each manually, but the format painter tool can achieve this much faster.
Using Format Painter
When you have styled an element that you would like to copy, select that element. In this case, I have selected the styled bulleted list:
Note that selecting a mix of elements will not work. In this case, If the heading was included in this selection and applied to the target, it would change all of the target into headings and remove the bullets.
Next, go to the top toolbar and select format painter. If your toolbar doesn’t have labels, choose the paintbrush icon. Google uses a paint roller icon for their version.
After selecting format painter, select the list where you would like to apply the styling. Select carefully, as the styling does not stay on the clipboard and will need to be re-selected if any of the target text is missed.
As soon as the target text is selected, it is transformed.
Pro tip: if you need to apply the same style to multiple lists, leave the target list selected, and then select the format painter to copy the target list to the next target.
Repeat the process to update the headings or any other elements.
Summary
For some, using the format painter tool can be a game-changer. If you’d like to learn more about using the format painter, check out the article and video Tech-Talk has created.
