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About this lesson
Quickly copy and paste “formats” with this amazing button.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Format Painter - Exercise.docx67.5 KB Format Painter - Exercise Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Format Painter
Use the Format Painter to copy and paste formatting.
When to use
Any time you want to quickly duplicate formatting (but not the text), the Format Painter button is the best option.
Instructions
- Click the line of text that you want to copy Formatting from.
- Click the Format Painter button on the Home ribbon, Clipboard group - look for the paintbrush icon.
- Click and drag over the line of text you want to apply the Formatting to.
Tips:
- The format only applies to the SELECTED text. Make sure you have told the computer what you want it to do by clicking, dragging, and selecting the text.
- Single-click the Format Painter to use it one time only.
- Double-click the Format Painter to use it as many times as you like until you are finished.
- Press ESC to turn off the Format Painter when you are done, or click the Format Painter button to turn it off.
- 00:04 Welcome to my favorite lesson on the Format Painter.
- 00:08 In my opinion, the Format Painter on the Home ribbon, this cute little paintbrush
- 00:12 right here, one of the best buttons ever invented by Microsoft, my goodness.
- 00:17 Let's go ahead and use it.
- 00:18 The rule is you first must select what you want to copy,
- 00:22 what format you want to copy.
- 00:23 So right now this Topic 1, Bold and Red, I'm selecting the format I like.
- 00:28 I didn't even have to select the whole line, it could have just been the word.
- 00:32 And now I come up to the Home ribbon and I click once on the Format Painter.
- 00:36 Before I click, notice, the tooltip popped up and the title of the tooltip shows
- 00:41 you Ctrl + Shift + C to copy the format, Ctrl + Shift + V to paste the format.
- 00:46 If you want to memorize that, that's your personal preference.
- 00:49 Me personally, I haven't memorized it, I just like hitting the paintbrush.
- 00:53 So I'm going to click it once and I get to use it once, so
- 00:56 I'm now going to bring my mouse down into the text.
- 00:59 Notice the cute little paintbrush attached to my mouse?
- 01:01 Well, I simply click and drag and it will apply the format.
- 01:05 I stopped short for some reason, let's go get that again.
- 01:08 Hit that one more time and just finish up that line, there we go.
- 01:12 Now you notice I said click it once, you see, if you click it once,
- 01:15 you get to use it once.
- 01:16 If you double-click that Format Painter,
- 01:18 you get to use it as many times as you want.
- 01:20 Let's go ahead and do this one.
- 01:21 Topic 2, I selected the line and check this out, my minibar came up,
- 01:25 and there's a cute little paintbrush right there.
- 01:28 This time I'm going to double-click it, I don't use it multiple times.
- 01:31 Double click it, I'm going to bring my mouse down into the line below.
- 01:35 I can click and drag from the right to the left if I want.
- 01:38 And notice my little paintbrush is still there.
- 01:42 So I can come over to the right hand side where it says, Apply Topic 2,
- 01:47 and now I'm done with it.
- 01:49 Now, you have to turn this thing off, it will stay on until you tell it to stop.
- 01:54 So in order to do that, there's two ways.
- 01:57 I can go up to the tool and turn it off or I can press Escape on my keyboard,
- 02:01 the Escape key, top left hand corner of your keyboard, I always hit that one.
- 02:07 And now it's all off and you can tell the square vanished off my Format Painter.
- 02:12 Okay, let's do some more of this.
- 02:13 I've got Topic 3 right here.
- 02:16 I'm going to double click the Format Painter on the minibar.
- 02:20 I'm going to apply it to right underneath and over on the right hand side.
- 02:26 I'm just clicking on the margin area in front of this, but
- 02:29 notice that little paintbrush is still there, hitting Escape to turn it off.
- 02:34 Okay, how about Topic 4, Bold and Underline.
- 02:37 I'm going to just apply this once, click the Format Painter once, and
- 02:42 apply it once.
- 02:43 And what did I miss up here?
- 02:44 Topic 1 and Topic 2, let's finish it up.
- 02:46 Grabbing Topic 1, double-click the paintbrush, click click,
- 02:51 come in over here, click and drag over Topic 1 here, Topic 1 here.
- 02:55 And I missed the Topic 2 earlier, we'll grab it real quick.
- 02:58 Oops, see what happened?
- 03:00 I forgot to turn it off and I applied Topic 1.
- 03:02 So, Ctrl + Z will undo.
- 03:05 The undo button right up here, or press Ctrl + Z will undo if you went too far.
- 03:10 That's the danger of not remembering to turn off that Format Painter.
- 03:15 Topic 2 is still selected, hit my paintbrush once, come over here and
- 03:19 apply it, and that's it.
- 03:21 Have fun with the Format Painter, it's fantastic.
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