Have you noticed that small paintbrush on your formatting toolbar (Office 2003) or the Ribbon (Office 2007)? As an instructor, I’ve found that most people ignore it, or don’t even notice it, because they don’t know what it does.
That little paintbrush is called FORMAT PAINTER. It’s an extremely useful formatting tool that cuts down on formatting time as you work in any Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher.)
Format any selection of text. Select that text and click the FORMAT PAINTER once and your cursor turns into a small paintbrush. You can now select a new chunk of text and the same formatting will be applied. Once you click off the text, the paintbrush goes away and you can continue working on your document.
This is useful if you’ve applied bold, underline, and a new font. Instead of choosing all 3 of those options again, you need to only choose the FORMAT PAINTER.
If you want to apply certain formatting to more than one selection, double-click the FORMAT PAINTER. Your cursor will remain a paintbrush and allow you to change the formatting to as many different areas as necessary. When you are done formatting, click the FORMAT PAINTER button again.
For more tips to help you be more productive, attend any of our Microsoft Office classes! All of our instructors love to help you learn all the tips and tricks!
