Page 186 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

168 Hiring Out the Format Painter
Figure 2-19:
Selecting
a new gradient for your cell selection in the Fill Effects dialog box.
Check the Sample area at the bottom of the Fill tab of the Format Cells dialog box to check out the shading pattern and make sure that it’s the one you want to use before you click OK to apply it to the cell selection. If you don’t like the effect after you’ve applied it to the cell selection, click the Undo button on the Quick Access toolbar or press Ctrl+Z immediately to remove it.
To get rid of all fill colors, gradients, and shading patterns used in a cell selection, click the No Fill option at the bottom of the Fill Color button’s drop-down palette on the Home tab.
Hiring Out the Format Painter
The Format Painter button (with paintbrush icon) in the Clipboard group of the Home tab takes formatting from the current cell and applies it to cells that you “paint” by dragging its special thick-white cross-plus-paintbrush mouse pointer through them. This tool, therefore, provides a quick-and-easy way to take a bunch of different formats (such as a new font, font size, bold, and italics) that you applied individually to a cell in the spreadsheet and then turn around and use them as the guide for formatting a new range of cells.
To use the Format Painter, follow these steps:
1. Position the cell cursor in a cell that contains the formatting that you want copied to another range of cells in the spreadsheet.
This cell becomes the sample cell whose formatting is taken up by Format Painter and copied in the cells that “paint” with its special mouse pointer.