Format Painter

There are many common features between the Microsoft Office suite applications.  Some we use on a frequent basis such as bold, italic, underline etc.  One feature that often gets overlooked but can save you time is the Format Painter.  In a Microsoft Office 2010 application, the Format Painter can be seen in the Clipboard group under the Home tab;

So, what is the purpose of the Format Painter?  The Format Painter is used to copy formatting applied to text in Word, a cell in Excel, a control on an Access form etc. and apply it to another piece of text, or a cell and so on. For example, you are creating a Word document and you format a title to be bold, font size 20, centered, underlined and in italics.  You wish to apply this same formatting to another title elsewhere in the document so, to save you making all those separate selections to achieve this, use the Format Painter.  Simple 'click' anywhere in the text you wish to copy the format from and click the Format Painter 'button'. This will change the Format Painter 'button' appearance to the following to indicate that it is on;

The cursor will also indicate that Format Painter is active by changing to this;

Now simply click on the next title (piece of text, cell etc.) to apply the copied formatting to this new destination. The Format Painter button and cursor will now revert back to the 'inactive' state.

Tips:  

If you wish to apply the same formatting to a number of different locations (ie several titles, several cells) instead of single clicking the Format Painter when activating it, use a double click.  This will keep the Format Painter active so it will continue to be able to apply the copied format until you perform a single click on the Format Painter to de-activate it.

In Excel, the Format Painter will also copy number formats, conditional formats etc.