Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

Format Painter: The Quick Way to Copy Formats

Few Word direct formatting features are as powerful—or as much fun—as Format Painter. Imagine you've worked really hard to format a block of text just the way you want it. It is in New Century Schoolbook, 24-point italic, centered, and bordered with a box. Perhaps you've even added an effect, such as embossing.

Now you want to apply the same formats elsewhere. You could create a style—and if you plan to reuse the format repeatedly, you probably should. But in this case, you don't care about saving the formatting for posterity; you just want a quick, easy way to apply the formats once or twice more.

To use the Format Painter, first select the text with the formats you want to copy. Then click the ...