Microsoft Word Tip 1: Format Brush

Microsoft Word has a leading share of the market for word processing software, and the odds are that you will use it at some point if you are not already. You may even use to prepare your resume for your next job. With this in mind, Contemporaries, Inc. is doing a series of articles on Microsoft Word Tips.

In this article, we will focus on the ‘Format Brush.’ This tool lets you apply everything you like about one part of your document and apply it to another of your with just two clicks of the mouse.   That means if you like the font, color, bulleting, indention, alignment,  spacing, etc. in one line of your document, you can apply it to another whole section with two clicks. It looks bad when your resume or a report has multiple fonts with different colors and bullets that are lined-up evenly or with the same spacing. This tool lets you fix that. Here is how it works:

Step 1: Select the word, line or section of text you want to apply elsewhere.

Step 2: Click the Format brush in the top left (hint: it looks like a brush). You can also get to the format brush with macros or in a little box that appears when you select or left click text. They all do the same thing though.

Step 3: Then just select the line or section you would like to apply that formatting to.  

Note how in the picture above, that the third step gained the bullets, font and other formatting from text selected by the format brush in the steps above.  This tip word in other Microsoft Office programs too, such as Publisher, Excel and PowerPoint. 

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