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Using styles to format worksheet cells is certainly the way to go when you have to apply the same formatting over and over again in the workbooks you create. However, at times, you may simply want to reuse a particular cell format and apply it to particular groups of cells in a single workbook without ever bothering to create an actual style for it.
For those occasions when you feel the urge to format on the fly (so to speak), use the Format Painter tool (the paintbrush icon) on the Standard toolbar. This wonderful little tool enables you to take the formatting from a particular cell that you fancy and apply that formatting to other cells in the worksheet simply by selecting those cells.
To use the Format Painter to copy a cell's formatting to other worksheet cells, just follow these easy steps:
1. Format an example cell or cell range in your workbook, selecting whatever fonts, alignment, borders, patterns, and color you want it to have.
2. With the cell pointer in one of the cells you just fancied up, click the Format Painter button in the Standard toolbar.
The mouse pointer changes from the standard thick, white cross to a thick, white cross with an animated paintbrush by its side, and you see a marquee around the selected cell with the formatting to be used by the Format Painter.
3. Drag the white-cross-plus-animated-paintbrush pointer (the Format Painter pointer) through all the cells you want to format in the same manner as the example cell you first selected.
As soon as you release the mouse button, Excel applies all the formatting used in the example cell to all the cells you just selected!
To keep the Format Painter selected so that you can format a bunch of different cell ranges with the Format Painter pointer, double-click the Format Painter button after you select the sample cell with the desired formatting. To stop formatting cells with the Format Painter pointer, you simply click the Format Painter button (it remains selected when you double-click it) again. This restores the button to its unselected state and returns the mouse pointer to its normal thick, white-cross shape.
 | Note that you can use the Format Painter to restore a cell range that you gussied all up back to its boring default (General) cell format. To do this, click an empty, previously unformatted cell in the worksheet before you click the Format Painter button and then use the Format Painter pointer to drag through the cells you want returned to the default General format. |
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