Microsoft Word

Format Painter, The Magic Time Saver

The format painter has got to be, hands down my FAVORITE tool in Microsoft Word! Yes, I agree that it takes a little bit of coordination to use as first, but once you get the hang of it you can really speed along through a document with your editing.

Here's what it looks like and it's found on the standard toolbar in Word.

So what does this little paint brush do? Let's say you've typed out a lengthy text document and you have a word or two in the document where the font is bold, underlined and in a different color than the rest of the text. You decide that you like the look of this text and how it stands out and will draw your readers attention. You would like to add this formatting to many other areas of text but then you think, that's going to take me forever. There's three or more steps for each word. I have to change it to bold, then underline it, then change the color or the font.

 

 

Here's where the format painter comes to the rescue!
Select the text that is currently formatted, then click "one time" on the format paint brush
then select text that you would like to have "painted" with the formatting of the other text. Instantly the formatting options are applied to this new text saving you lots of time.

It gets even better! If you would like to repeat this format painting for many words or even lines of text simply "double click" the format paint brush after selecting the text that is currently formatted in the style that you want to duplicate. Now, each and every time that you select text it will be painted in this format.

To turn the format painter brush off simply click the brush one last time.

Now, how much time did I just save you with your documents?

 

Kimberly Deprey
Copyright 2008