Quick Tip - Format Painter

Copying formats with the 'Format Painter' icon is a great time-saver.

It's that little icon way over on the top left of your screen in Excel 2010 on the Home tab, with the picture of a paintbrush next to it:

I even like the paintbrush idea - it's sort of saying "take a bit of whatever paint we've used over here and then dab it over there for the same effect". Brilliant.

But did you know that you can repeat-apply your chosen format to any number of cells or areas in your worksheet (or entire workbook in fact) simply by firstly double-clicking the icon?

Try it for yourself - but remember to click the icon again or hit 'Escape' to stop the effect, or you could find yourself clicking 'Undo' for some time...