Because of its brush icon, the Format Painter is often mistaken for the Paste button. It is available in most Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, Publisher, Access and PowerPoint. The Format Painter copies character formats - italics, bold, font size, font colour and so on - that you have already applied to text and applies it to new text. In Word, the Format Painter also copies paragraph formats like tabs, alignment, bullets, numbering, line spacing and so on. This makes the Format Painter a great tool to sort out problems with numbering systems in documents.
To copy and paste formats once:
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Select the text with the formats that you want to copy
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Click Format Painter
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Click the text to which the format is to be copied
To copy and paste formats several times:
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Select the text with the formats that you want to copy
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Double-click Format Painter
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Click the text to which the format is to be copied
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When you have finished pasting the formats, click Format Painter again
Great uses for Format Painter
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In Word, when numbering goes wrong, select a correctly numbered and formatted paragraph (including the paragraph mark), double-click Format Painter and apply the formats to the badly formatted text.
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When you want to apply the same formatting to text in different places within the same document.
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When you have forgotten the font name, font size, font colour or other format that you have used for a heading in a document that you worked some time ago.
