Format Painter is very useful tool in Excel which allows you to save a lot of time. This tool is used to copy formatting style from one cell and paste it to another one or to given data range (row, column, table etc.)
You can find Format Painter in Home tab of the Excel Ribbon:
How to use Format Painter?
Using Format Painter is very easy and intuitive.
Firstly, select cell which contains formatting you want to copy:
Secondly, when you cell is selected, click on Format Painter command. As a result, you can see that selected cell has been highlighted with green, floating border and mouse cursor is changed to cross:
Now, Format Painter is activated, so next step is selecting cell(s), to which you want to paste copied formatting style:
Important note:
Remember to not take your finger off the left mouse button when selecting cells – you can do it only after all the target cells are selected, because releasing the mouse button causes that Format Painter is used and deactivated.
Format Painter can change not only formatting style such as font or filling color, but also can adjust data format (text, numbers, percents etc.):
Tip:
As mentioned above, when you release left mouse button Format Painter is used and deactivated. In case you want to format not adjacent cells it means, that you have to select and activate Format Painter multiple times. To avoid that, you can double click on Format Painter command and then double click on each cell, to which you want to paste formatting:
