Paintbrush Formatting Shortcut

Dear Amy

Thank you for attending Excel Advanced course with us!!! I hope you enjoyed the course and benefited from it.

I have two solutions for you. Easy one and a bit tricky one. Because you have done Excel Advanced with us I am sure you must have done Macros as well. The second solution deals with Macros.

Let's Start off with the easy method.

1. Click on the cell you have the formatting on.

2. CTRL +C (Copy)

3. Click on the cell where you want the formatting to be copied to.

4. On the keyboard press Alt+E, S, T, Enter. You don't need to press all the keys together.


If you want a single letter shortcut key assigned then as mentioned above you need to create a macro and then as you may be aware that you can assign shortcut to any macro. Please carry out the following steps:

1. From the menu bar choose Tools > Macros > Visual Basic Editor

2. In eth Visual Basic Editor Window please choose Insert > Module

3. Copy and Paste the below code:

Sub PasteSpecialFormats()
If Application.CutCopyMode = False Then
Beep
MsgBox "No formatting in Clipboard"
Else
Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlFormats
End If
End Sub

4. Close the Visual Basic editor window.

5. Choose Tools > Macro > Macros... or Alt +F8

6. You should be able to see the macro that you created (by coping and pasting the code above).

7. Choose the macro and then click the options button on the Macros Dialog box.

NB: Please note that the options button will not be activated if Macro security is set to High so please change the security to medium by choosing Tools > Macro> Security... Set it to Medium. You may have to restart Excel for the security to take effect!


8. Assign any Shortcut key of your choice (Try not to use the commonly known ones. Try CTRL+SHIFT+F)

9. Click on the cell you have the formatting on.

10. CTRL +C (Copy)

11. Click on the cell where you want the formatting to be copied to.

12. Use you shortcut key that you assigned and it should work perfectly :)

I hope this helps.


I hope this has answered your query.

If this has answered your query then I would request you to please mark the question as resolved!! If not and you have a specific question related to this then please post it as a new question and we should be able to provide you the solution for it!!

Kindest Regards


Rajeev Rawat
MOS Master Instructor 2000 and 2003
MCAS Master Instructor 2007
MCT