Copying Cell Formats

[Ginty Burns]

I don't know where this message went after I posted it
last week...

I would like to find a method of copying cell shading in a
table. Eg if I have shaded some cells a particular shade
of green and I want to shade other cells in the table in
exactly the same colour. Format Painter doesn't work.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Which version of Word?

If you are using Word 2002 (XP) or later, table styles may help some.

Otherwise, if you view the Tables and Borders Toolbar and use the shading
button it will give you a drop-down pallet which should include your color.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory:
<URL: http://addbalance.com/word/index.htm>

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide)
<URL: http://addbalance.com/usersguide/index.htm>

See also the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
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[Ginty Burns]

Sorry: that was in my original message, which my computer
promised me would appear soon and never did. It's Word
2000. I am waiting for something less irritating than XP
before I upgrade, although if the table styles do actually
work it may be worthwhile upgrading one of the machines in
our office.

The particular table I am struggling with is in a
template. When I open it, yes, I can get the current cell
shading colour by pointing to the shading button and then
and writing down the RGB values (not all the colours are
on the standard palette - if they were, this whole
exercise would be easier). But I still can't copy it, and
it doesn't show up as a "recently used colour" the way it
does in PowerPoint. That means to format other cells with
this colour I have go to custom colours and put the RGB
values in. I could then use Ctrl-Y to repeat this
formatting in the cells I want to be this colour, and then
start the whole thing over again for the next colour, but
wouldn't it be easy if I could just use Format Painter? Or
a macro?

Am I just stuck with it the way it is? We normally make an
assumption that the program is limited, but every so often
I make the effort to explore further.

Thanks

Ginty

 

[Bruce]

The format painter does not copy cell formats in Word
2000, nor does there appear to be a way to add custom
colors to Borders and Shading. Format painter, unlike in
Excel, works on the text formatting within the cell
independently of the cell format. This gives you a lot of
formatting flexibility, but unfortunately it can make
things very tedious indeed in situations such as yours.
Your best bet is probably a macro, although if you record
the macro you might want to edit it to remove other
formatting instructions for borders, etc. I think the e-
mail address to suggest improvements is
(e-mail address removed). The clumsiness of table formatting
is long overdue for improvement, in my opinion.

 

[Ginty BUrns]

Yes, exactly. It's bigger than just a clumsy table
formatting issue: the inconsistency and lack of
integration among the Office programs continues to astound
me. I don't think I'm skilled enough at macros to remove
the irrelevant parts without destroying the whole thing.
In fact, I'm not skilled enough to put in a command that
says "go and get the current colour and remember it" but
nothing ventured nothing gained, I suppose. I can probably
fudge something.

Thanks

 

[Ginty Burns]

I'm not really as intimidated by macros as I make myself
sound. It's more that I don't have much patience for all
those lines of code that Word inserts into what should be
a fairly simple recorded macro. But I will pursue it,
since it appears to be our only option. (I just checked
out the "table style" option in XP and am only vaguely
surprised to see there is no option to apply a style just
to the current cell, making it fairly useless.)
Thanks for your suggestions.