Excel Format Painter — How to keep Format Painter on for more than one change

Do you ever use the format painter? It’s an extremely handy way to apply font, color, etc. from one section or cell to another.

Format Painter is located at the top left menu in Microsoft Office Products like Excel.

1. Click in a cell which has the formatting you’d like to copy. In example below the orange cell color is selected.

2. Click on the Paintbrush icon to copy the cell’s formatting — enabling the Format Painter

Excel spreadsheet showing Format Painter

Format Painter Icon

3. The cursor will turn into a paintbrush, and the next cell you click in will update to the format you had previously selected. In the below example the cell will become colored orange.

Format updated with Format Painter

But what if you need to reformat multiple cells with the same appearance? You don’t need to keep mousing over and clicking on Format Painter. Instead Double-click on Format Painter and it will ‘stick’ or persist until you click on ESC, Format Painter again or just start typing.

I wish I would have known about this months ago. This simple tip would have saved my wrists and time mousing back and forth to to the Format Painter reformatting multiple cells in large spreadsheets. Hope this little gem helps you in your next formatting adventure.