Copying Formatting

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 16, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Often it is beneficial to copy formatting from one place in your spreadsheet to another. Excel provides a shortcut for doing this:

  1. Select the cell that contains the formatting you want to copy.
  2. Click once on the Format Painter tool on the toolbar. (This tool has a small paintbrush on it.)
  3. Select the cell or range of cells that you want to have the same formatting as the cell you selected in step 1.

If you want to copy formatting to more than one location, then you can double-click on the Format Painter tool in step 2. When you are done copying, simply press Esc to indicate you are done.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (1928) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Using Multiple Print Settings

Do you have a worksheet from which you need to print only portions of the data available? There are two ways you can ...

Discover More

New Page Appears at Right of First Page

When you start typing in a new document and you get to the end of the first page, Word could place the next page at the ...

Discover More

Printing Comments from a Macro

Need to print the comments you've added to a document? You can do it manually or you can have your macro do the printing. ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Specifying Superscript Text

Applying different formatting to the text within a cell can seem a bit confusing. This is certainly the case when it ...

Discover More

Formatting Raw Data

When you get a bunch of raw data into Excel from an external source, it isn't going to be formatted to your liking. The ...

Discover More

Automatically Copying Formatting

It's easy to automatically set the contents of one cell to be equal to another cell. But what if you want to copy the ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is five more than 5?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.

Links and Sharing
OUR COMPANY
OUR PRODUCTS
OUR SITES
 

Copyright © 2026 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.