Format Painter Shortcut

[Bill F.]

Anyone know a keyboard shortcut to activate the Format painter?

Thank you, Bill

 

[Joerg]

You can't activate it with a built-in shortcut. And here is the really bad
You can't even activate it programmatically. The format painter
performs something like "CopySpecial" by copying only formats. VBA kowns
only a Copy method, which does not provide a possibility to mimic what the
format painter does.

The usual way to provide keyboard-only operation is to perform a normal copy
(Ctrl+C) and then assign a keyboard shortcut to a macro which provides the
Paste Special functionality. You can find an example here:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/paste.htm#painter

I don't like this approach since it's too easy to accidentally perform a
normal paste instead of pasting only formats, but other people may find it
useful.

Cheers,

Joerg Mochikun

 

[Bill F.]

Thank you for the reply, very helpful information!

Bill

 

[psimon]

By "keyboard shortcut", I assume you want to perform this using the
keyboard rather than the mouse. Here are the keystrokes you can use,
although I don't know how "short" you'll consider it.

First, highlight the cell(s) whose format you want to copy, then do
Ctrl+C for copy. Then highlight the cell(s) to which you want to copy
the format and do the following "shortcut" keystrokes:

Alt+E, S, t, Enter

(Ignore the dialog boxes that come up on screen as you do this.)

 

[karthick ganesan]

I tried this shortcut in my document. It is cool shortcut. Thanks for your valuable tip.

 

[Baldie McFlynnstone]

If you add the format painter to the quick access toolbar in excel 2007, you can utilize alt+(number) to access it depending on what else you have in that toolbar.

I have 4 items up there, with the paintbrush in spot 4.

Alt+4 gives me the paintbrush on the current selection.

Then I navigate to the range I want to apply it to (keyboard arrows or mouse if it is not adjacent)

Hope that helps.

Regards -