Fun with
the Excel 2007 Format Painter
Marne Einarson (mke3@cornell.edu)
This corner of the newsletter
is reserved for readers to share practical tips, techniques
and shortcuts that can make a difference in our work.
Send your tips to Gayle Fink (gfink@bowiestate.edu).
This is usually Gayle’s
“corner” of the newsletter, but this month I’m contributing
a small tip. Our office made the switch to MS Office
2007 a few months ago and I must confess that I am
still learning how to how to get some things done
in the newer version. An Excel 2007 feature that I
recently stumbled upon and have come to love is Format
Painter – it’s the small paintbrush icon that appears
on the Home tab of Excel. It’s a handy way to paste
existing formatting to new cells in an Excel spreadsheet.
Here’s how it works:
- Format a cell in the spreadsheet.
- Click on the formatted cell
to make it an active cell.
- Click on the Format
Painter (paintbrush) icon located on the Home tab.
- Click on another cell to copy formatting from the active cell to this second
cell.
- Format Painter makes it easy to copy formatting
to multiple adjacent cells. Simply format your first
cell as you like, click to make this cell active,
click the Format Painter icon, then drag select the
adjacent destination cells.
- Likewise, you can easily
copy formatting to non-adjacent cells. Format your
first cell, make it active, double click the Format
Painter icon, click on your first destination cell
to copy the formatting, and continue clicking on additional
cells to copy the formatting there as well. When you
are done, click on the Format Painter icon once more
to turn it off.
Using Format Painter is so much easier than the “Copy/Paste Special/Formats” routine I was using before. It’s little things like this that make me a happy camper!