The Fastest Way to Copy Formatting in Word

If you’ve ever spent time getting text looking exactly right in Word, only to realise you need to apply the same formatting somewhere else, you’ll know how tedious it is to redo every single click. The good news is that copying formatting in Word is much easier than you might think — and Format Painter is the tool that makes it happen.

What Is Format Painter?

We’re all familiar with copying and pasting content. But Format Painter does something different — it copies the look of your text rather than the words themselves. Think of it as a style stamp. You pick up the formatting from one place and paint it onto another.

It lives on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, and it’s that little paintbrush icon. Easy to overlook, seriously useful once you know it’s there.

Copy formatting in Word using the Format Painter button on the Home tab

When Does It Actually Save You Time?

If you’re just applying bold or changing a colour, it’s not a huge deal to do that manually. Where Format Painter earns its keep is when you’ve applied several things at once — a specific font size, a colour, italics, and a text effect, for example. Recreating all of that from scratch on multiple headings? That’s a lot of clicks. Format Painter does it in one.

The Format Painter paintbrush cursor ready to apply formatting in Word

How to Use It (The Basic Version)

You don’t need to select all the formatted text — just click anywhere within it. Then click the Format Painter button. You’ll notice a little paintbrush appears next to your cursor. From there, either click a word to apply the formatting, or click and drag to apply it across a larger section.

Simple as that.

The Trick Most People Don’t Know

Here’s where it gets even more useful. By default, Format Painter switches off after one use. But if you double-click the button instead of single-clicking, it stays on. You can then apply the same formatting to as many different sections as you like, one after another, without going back to click the button each time.

When you’re done, just click the button again to switch it off — or press Escape on your keyboard if that’s easier.

You Can Use It Across Documents Too

This one surprises people. If you double-click to keep Format Painter active and then switch to a different Word document, the paintbrush stays ready to go. That makes it brilliant if you’ve got a document that’s formatted exactly how you like it, and you want to bring that same look into a new file. Open both, grab the formatting from the first, and paint it into the second.

Using Format Painter across two open Word documents to copy formatting

A Quick Recap

Single click — use Format Painter once, then it switches off
Double click — keeps it active for multiple uses
Escape — switches it off quickly without going back to the ribbon
Works across multiple documents

It’s one of those tools you might not use every day, but once you know it’s there, you’ll be glad you do. Next time you’re reformatting the same heading for the fifth time, give Format Painter a go instead.

Created with the help of Claude AI from an original transcript.