Quick Reformatting in Microsoft Word 2007

Format Painter Lets You Reformat Paragraphs in a Single Click

Many people spend the bulk of their days working in two Microsoft programs: Word and Excel.  And if you've ever done a lot of cutting and pasting in and between these programs, you know how quickly you can end up with a very muddled-looking document.  If you're pasting from email, Web pages, and a variety of Word documents, for example, you can easily end up with something that looks like this:

To bring all these formats in line, you can do several things. First, you can select the whole passage, then alter the font, font style, and font size.  Or, with a nifty feature in Word 2007, you can simply use Format Painter.

This feature will automatically copy the font and font style of a selection and replicate it to your next selection.  It doesn't alter paragraph characteristics, however.

To use Format Painter, first highlight the selection whose format you want to copy:

Then go click the Format Painter button under the Home tab.  As you can see, double-clicking it will apply the same formatting to multiple places in the document.

Then simply highlight the area whose formatting you want to change.  You'll see the paintbrush icon, indicating it's in Format Painter mode.  When you take your finger off the mouse, voila - everything will be formatted correctly.

The same principle applies to Excel 2007 charts - no more telling each individual cell that it's a number, data, or currency.  Try it yourself and see!