What is format painter in excel

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Course Price View Course. Free Excel Course. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you. Email ID. Regrettably, Microsoft Excel doesn't provide a single shortcut that you could use to copy cell formats.

However, this can be done by using a sequence of shortcuts. So, if you prefer working form the keyboard most of the time, you can copy format in Excel in one of the following ways. Please note, the shortcut keys for Format Painter in Excel should be pressed one by one, not all at once:. These are the fastest ways to copy formatting in Excel.

If you've accidentally copied a wrong format, no problem, our next article will teach you how to clear it : I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog soon!

Format Painter and other ways to copy formatting in Excel by Svetlana Cheusheva updated on July 4, With just a couple of clicks, it can help you reproduce most, if not all of the formatting settings, including: Number format General, Percentage, Currency, etc.

Font face, size, and color Font characteristics such as bold, italic, and underline Fill color cell background color Text alignment, direction and orientation Cell borders In all Excel versions, the Format Painter button is located on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, right next to the Paste button: How to use Format Painter in Excel To copy cell formatting with the Excel Format Painter, just do the following: Select the cell with the formatting you want to copy.

On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the Format Painter button. The pointer will change to a paint brush. Move to the cell where you want to apply the formatting and click on it. Excel Format Painter tips If you need to change formatting of more than one cell, clicking each cell individually would be tedious and time consuming. How to copy formatting to a range of cells. How to copy format to non-adjacent cells.

How to copy the formatting of one column to another column row-by-row To quickly copy the format of the entire column, select the heading of the column whose formatting you want to copy, click Format Painter , and then click the heading of the target column. As demonstrated in the following screenshot, the new formatting is applied to the target column row-by-row, including the column width : In a similar manner, you can copy the format of the entire row , column-by-column.

How to copy formatting down a column using the Fill Handle We often use the fill handle to copy formulas or auto fill cells with data. Since conditional formatting allows you to specify multiple rules on the same data set, doing it again for different data sets could be time-consuming. Now, if I add a new column with marks in a new subject Physics , instead of applying the conditional formatting again, I can simply use the Format Painter to copy the cell formatting as well as conditional formatting rules.

Using Format Painter, you can also quickly copy formatting from shapes and paste it to other shapes. Here are the steps to copy formatting from the shape and paste it to another using format painter in Excel:. In some cases, you may want to copy the formatting from a range of cells and paste it to a non-contiguous range of cells.

When you click on the Format Painter icon in the Home tab, it allows you to copy and paste the formatting only once.

To copy and paste the formatting multiple times, you need to double-click on the Format Painter icon. This will allow you to copy from a range of cells and paste that formatting multiple times until you disable the Format Painter. Best Excel Shortcuts.