The Format Painter button is a handy little tool that can quickly copy formats for text and shapes, to other text or objects. It’s located on the Standard Toolbar in MS Office 2003 and earlier editions. In MS Office 2007, it’s on the left side of the ribbon, in the Clipboard area.

In Excel, click on the cell where the text is formatted the way you want it. Click on the Format Painter button. (Your cursor turns into a plus sign with a paintbrush next to it). Then click on the cell that has the text that you want to change. It should instantly change to match the formatting that was in the first cell. If you want to change the text in multiple cells, see the Quick Tip down below.

In MS Word, have you ever had a section of text suddenly look different from the rest? The cause might be that the section of text has been switched back to the default settings that are MS Word’s default settings, or it could be a computer glitch. You might also want to change text that you’ve pasted in your document from somewhere else. To fix this, select some text that has the proper formatting, by dragging your cursor over it. (Don’t worry about selecting entire words or phrases – ANY text will do). Click on the Format Painter button. (Your cursor turns into an I bar with a paintbrush next to it.) Then drag over the text that you want formatted the same way (note – if you drag over additional text that already has the correct formatting on it, that text will not change, so don’t worry about being precise).

This works in PowerPoint the same way, too.

Quick Tip: If you double-click on the Format Painter button, it will keep the selected formatting on, so you can change multiple selections of text or objects. Just click once again on it when you are finished, to turn it off.

Create a toolbar button in Word 2003 that will let you shadow the text you’ve selected.

I like the 3D emphasis that the shadow effect has and I use it on my titles often. In the Tools, Customize area of Word, it lets you drag additional formatting buttons to your toolbar, but they didn’t include the shadow button among them. So I decided to create a macro to let you apply shadowing to text with one click of a new toolbar button.

Skills You’ll Learn:

• Creating a macro
• Editing a macro
• Customizing a macro button

My TeacherTube video on Creating and Editing a Word Macro

MS Word Selecting and Moving Text Shortcuts

Knowing how to select text quickly is very important, because many commands begin by selecting the text that you want to effect. Remember: You’ve got to select what you want to effect!

Some of these selection tips involve clicking in the left margin area of the document. The best way to do this is to be in Print Layout view (View, Print Layout). That will give you a large left margin to use. (It’s also the best way view to use to see what will actually be printed when you want to print your document.)

• Ctrl, Home moves the cursor to the top of the document.
• Ctrl, End moves the cursor to the bottom of the document.
• Press the Home key to go to the start of a line; press the End key to go to the end of a line.
• Page Up moves up one screen.
• Page Down moves down one screen.
• The direction keys will move one space (or row) in their direction.
• Clicking once on a word lets you edit the word at that point.
• Double-clicking a word will select the entire word.
• Triple-clicking a word will select the paragraph containing the word.
• Holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on a word will select an entire sentence.
• Clicking once in the left margin will select a line.
• Double-clicking in the left margin will select a paragraph.
  Triple-clicking in the left margin will select the entire document.
• Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing a left arrow or right direction arrow will jump one word. Keep holding down the Ctrl key and you can jump over several words as you keep tapping the direction arrow. Holding down the Shift key at the same time will let you select them at the same time.
• Hold down your Ctrl key and you can select non-contiguous text. (That’s text that’s not touching).
• To select a large section of text, click once where you want to start your selection, scroll to where you want to end your selection, hold down the Shift key, then click where you want the selection to end.
• Note: If you need to adjust the selection a little, don’t start over! Instead, hold down on the Shift key as you use the direction keys to add or subtract to your selection.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key while moving, to select text at the same time, or while you are using navigating keys (like Ctrl End), as well.

I made a song about highlighting (selectiing) large amounts of text. You can hear it at my podcast website: http://www.gcast.com/u/spooferkd