Format painter/format paintbrush

Word 2002 has a format painter. Look for an icon depicting a yellow paintbrush. You may not see the button. In which case, click on the arrow at the end of the toolbar and choose it from there. It will be added to your available buttons. If you select a section of text, click this brush, and then select another portion of text, the formatting of the first section will be transferred to the second. Double click the button and the painter will stay selected. You can then apply the formatting to several parts of your document.

There seems to be little on this in the Help in Word 2002, and referring the query to the Microsoft help site, produced only a brief article, giving the use of the double click. However, for some useful tips on using Word, including getting the best out of the format painter, try this URL: http://training.tccs.tufts.edu/pdftips/wadvtips.pdf StarOffice 8.0/OpenOffice 2.0 has a format paintbrush. It works in a similar manner to Word's format painter. StarOffice 8.0's help describes how to use it. It then gives a table describing the formatting attributes that the paintbrush can copy.

You can use the Format Paintbrush tool to copy formatting from a text selection or object and apply the formatting to another text selection or object.

• Select the text or object whose formatting you want to copy.

• On the Standard Bar, click the Format Paintbrush icon.

  • The cursor changes to a paint bucket.

• If you want to apply the formatting to more than one selection, double-click the Format Paintbrush icon.

  • After you apply all the formatting, click the icon again.

• Select or click the text or object that you want to apply the formatting to.

  • To exclude paragraph formatting, hold down Ctrl when you click.

  • To exclude character formatting, hold down Ctrl+Shift when you click.

Earlier versions of StarOffice/OpenOffice.org do not have a format paintbrush. Instead, open the Stylist, select the text with the formatting you wish to reuse and drag it to the Stylist. Name the newly created style and you can then apply that style anywhere in your document in the normal manner. You can also import the style into another document. This technique works equally well in the latest version.