Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

It is probably safe to say that no one ever uses all the features of any Microsoft Office application. There are just too many of them.

Don’t tell Bill Gates, but there are two features I use so often I would pay extra for them. If you’ve ever taken a Microsoft Office course from me you already know this and skip reading it.

The Format Painter

I am a fanatic about formatting. I try to format as I write, but often the writing causes me to change my mind after much of it is done. Fortunately, Microsoft Office offers a solution known as the Format Painter.

Chances are that, even if you have never used it, you have seen the format painter icon on the standard toolbar. It looks like a little yellow paintbrush.

Here is how it works. Let’s say you have written a dozen pages of text. In order to make the text a little more readable, you break it up with subheadings.

To dress up the document a little more, you realize it would look really nice to keep the font style and size for the bulk of the text, but change the appearance of the subheading text.

The first step is to revise the subheading font size, style and general appearance. When you’re happy with it, select the entire text you just dressed up.

While it is selected, double-click the format painter icon. Normally, you only single-click on an icon, but I’ll explain the advantage of double-clicking in a moment.

Without clicking anyplace in the document, move to another instance of a subheading you need to format so that it matches that first one. You can use your scrollbar, the Page Up or Page Down key, or your mouse to find the text you are looking for. Just do not click anyplace in the document.

When you see the text you want to reformat, hover your cursor above the text. You’ll see that your cursor has changed into a paintbrush, just like the Format Painter icon.

Drag your cursor across the text you want to reformat. As you do, the style of the original subheading is applied to this text so that it matches.

In fact, all text that you drag the format painter across now will be changed to match that original text you selected.To make the format painter stop changing text, you can do one of two things: either touch the Escape key, or click again on the format painter icon on the standard toolbar. Otherwise, everything your cursor crosses will continue to be reformatted!

Now, back to the reason for double-clicking on the Format Painter icon in order to activate it. Single-clicking on the format painter activates it for a single “application” of the “paint.”

In other words, if you select text and then single-click on the Format Painter you will only be able to reformat one instance of text. Then the Format Painter turns itself off. If you need to format more than one text selection without reactivating the format painter, you need to double-click the format painter icon.

The Clipboard
Most people know you can use the old standby Control+C to copy data. Then you move your cursor to another location. Then you Control+V to paste. You can use the Copy and the Paste icons, instead. Prior to Office 2007, you could also go to the Edit menu and choose Copy; then go back to the Edit menu and choose Paste.

I intentionally configure computers in my classrooms to show the Task Pane in Office 2003, and earlier versions, because we use the Clipboard in class. Inevitably, students immediately close the Task Pane because they don’t understand how how the Clipboard interacts with Copy and Paste, and why they need to know understand the process.

Furthermore, most people don’t know how to get the Task Pane back or how to get to the Clipboard. That’s a hint that there is another way to open it, by the way! In earlier versions, the Clipboard was merely one of the things you could access through the Task Pane. But the Clipboard had become so useful that it earned its own keyboard shortcut, Control+CC and the Task Pane had its own shortcut, F1.

By the release of Office 2007, Microsoft seemed to have realized that savvy end-users know the Clipboard is perhaps the most useful item on the Task Pane — and that expert users use the Clipboard extensively.

Office 2007 eliminates the Control+CC Clipboard shortcut. It is no longer needed. You no longer even need a Task Pane to get to the Clipboard. The Clipboard has been graduated to its rightful place in the first section of the standard toolbar in Office 2007.

Some people gradually have realized that, once something is copied, you can continue pasting it as many times as you need as long as you keep any Office application open. You can even copy data from type of file, such as an Excel spreadsheet, and paste it into another type of file, such as a PowerPoint presentation. However, regardless of your copying method, the only thing you can paste through these techniques is the last thing you copied.

So what do Office experts know about the Clipboard that perhaps you don’t? When you open the Clipboard, you’ll see that it says “1 of 24.” That means you can copy up to two dozen items to the Clipboard and randomly paste them into any Office document, as long as you keep at least one Office application open. (The Clipboard clears itself when all applications are closed.)

What this means is, while you are working on your Excel spreadsheet, you can copy half a dozen pieces of data and it will stay on the Clipboard until you are ready to paste it elsewhere.

Then let’s say you copy information from a couple of Word documents to the Clipboard. Now, you go to PowerPoint and open the Clipboard. There is only one Clipboard across all the Office applications. As you copied all of the information above, it was all placed on the Clipboard and it can be pasted into files created with other Office applications.

When you get ready to paste the information into, your PowerPoint file, in the example above, open the Clipboard. With Office 2007, click on the Clipboard option on the standard toolbar; in earlier versions use the Control+CC shortcut.

Move your cursor to the location where you want to paste something. Find the data on the Clipboard. Click on the data and it will instantly paste itself into your document at the cursor’s current location.

It is not necessary to paste the items from the Clipboard in any particular order. It is not necessary to rapidly paste them elsewhere. They will remain on the Clipboard until you get ready to use them.

Get Your Money’s Worth
The Format Painter and the Clipboard are, without question, my two favorite Office features. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay extra for them. But they are so useful that, if you don’t take advantage of them, you really are not getting your money’s worth from Microsoft.

It appears that Microsoft has realized savvy users know all about the Format Painter. In Word 2007, the Format Painter icon appears in a the standard toolbar along with only the most-used icons in all of computerland: cut, copy and paste.

Obviously, the gurus over at Microsoft know that that the Format Painter is one of the four most important tools in Office. Like I said, if you’re not using it, you are not getting your money’s worth.

Also, in Word 2007, the Clipboard gets its own text menu in the standard toolbar. Right below those for most-used tools, is the clipboard. It had to only be a matter of time. Everyone knows Control+C is the shortcut for copying. Only the savvy know that Control+CC opens the Clipboard in earlier versions of Word. In the 2007 version, the shortcut doesn’t work any more because anyone who really knows how to use Word understands how valuable the Clipboard is.

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