The Format Painter

A little used feature of most Microsoft Office programs is the ‘Format Painter’ If you have a format for a heading or paragraph (Font, size, colour etc.) which you want to repeat in several other places in a document, or even a different document – the format painter makes it much easier.

Change the first heading or paragraph to how you want it to look.

Heading

Then highlight that section with the mouse and click the format painter button, this is the one that looks like a paint brush:

If there are multiple parts you wish to apply the format to, use a ‘double-click’ instead of a single click.  When you have applied all the changes – click the button once more  (or press ESC).

Another Heading

In Excel it can copy not just fonts and colours, but number formats such as currency or decimal places and date formats. It can be dragged over a range of cells

Look for it in other programs such as Publisher and PowerPoint.  Try it out, you can always ‘undo’ if it doesn’t achieve what you were after.