The Format Painter tool will help you quickly copy the formatting from anywhere in your workbook, saving you the time and hassle of re-doing the same formatting.
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Format Painter
Let's quickly go over what the Format Painter tool is and how it works, then show you how to use the Format Painter with some helpful tips to speed up your workflow.
What is the Format Painter Tool?
The Format Painter is a quick and easy way to copy all of the formatting from a particular cell to other cells.
This tool will help keep formatting consistent across your workbook without needing to spend a lot of time replicating formatting in each cell.
The Format Painter can be used to copy a single cell's formatting to another cell or a range of cells. The Format Painter can also be used to copy and entire range's formatting, and paste it to another range of cells.
How to Use the Format Painter
There are just three steps to using the Format Painter. Let's go over them.
1. Select a cell that contains the formatting you want to copy to other cells
2. Click the Format Painter button, found in the Home Ribbon Tab
3. Select another cell or range to automatically apply the formatting.
Here is the full process:
If you need to apply formatting to multiple areas, you may want to double click the Format Painter button to keep the Format Painter selection active.
How to Keep the Format Painter Active - The Double Click Trick
Instead of clicking the Format Painter button once when activating the tool, if you click it twice in a row, the Format Painter will stay active.
If you need to use the Format Painter on non-contiguous areas, you may find yourself in a cycle of clicking the Format Painter button then clicking the cell range you want to copy the format too. This can be tedious and can be sped up by double clicking the Format Painter tool.
This means that instead of the back-and-forth process, by double clicking on the Format Painter tool you will keep your copied formatting locked in until un-clicked.
This is an extremely useful trick and if you need to do a lot of format copying and will save you a lot of time.
