Tuesday Tip: Microsoft’s Format Painter – The Best Kept Secret

By Richard Stokes

 

Do you know what Format Painter in the suite of Microsoft Office Suites does? If you answered “Nope!”, then read on because it’s nothing short of liberating!

Quite simply it’s a 1-click tool that allows you to change sections of text to the same format and font as another section of your document. There are 2 areas where I find this to be very useful:

1) Quickly changing the font of text (one word or large sections) and, 2) Duplicating the exact same format for sections within a document. If you’ve ever wasted time wrestling with Word formatting and uniformity, THIS IS HUGE.

Here’s an example of #2:

Below is a section formatted in the way I want it, and I’m going to want to duplicate this across several sections of the same document.

Title Heading 1

  • Example A
  • Example B
  • Example C

 

In the interest of simply getting the ideas out of my head and in to the document, I have typed out another section called Title Heading 2 and not yet formatted it in the same style as the first

Title Heading 2

Point D

Point E

Point F

This is where Format Painter is a huge time saver. Here’s what you do:

1) Select Title Heading 1 as this has the first part of the formatting style that I want to duplicate. Then click the Format Painter icon found in the Home Tab.

 

 

 

 

 

You will notice that your cursor changes to a tiny paint brush:

 

2) Simply select the text that you want to format in the same way, in this case Title Heading 2 and it will change that text to the exact same style (font, format, indentation and spacing)

 

 

 

 3) Repeat this for the second section of text and you’ve now got 2 sections that are formatted the exact same way and the best part is you didn’t lose your mind in the process.

 

 

 

 

I have wrestled with formatting in Word for years and can’t believe that I have only now discovered this. If this is new for you as well, it’s a game changer.

 

Richard Stokes Headshot

Richard Stokes: As the Director of Sales for Network 1, Richard identifies “future” clients that can benefit from the support of an experienced, outsourced IT team. He helps clients and prospects find technology solutions they need to achieve better productivity and efficiency so they can focus on making money and growing their businesses.

Network 1 designs, builds and supports the IT you need to run your business more securely, productively and successfully. Whether you want to outsource all of your IT needs to a reliable, responsive, service-oriented company, or need to supplement the work of your internal IT staff, we will carefully evaluate where you are now, discuss where you want to go and implement and support a plan to get you there with as little interruption as possible.

1 Comment

  1. TJ Davis on April 25, 2019 at 10:35 am

    Wow! This IS a game changer! I will be sure to remember this one-very helpful! Thanks Richard!

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