Keep your Format Painter active — even after you re-format a range

The Format Painter button offers a great service. It copies the formatting from your selected cell or data range and pastes it onto the next data range you select. You don’t have to format a new area — including font, borders, number formats, etc. — from scratch.

But if you need to use the Format Painter to add your copied formatting to more than one non-contiguous data range, you’ll find yourself wasting time. You probably select the cell with the desired formatting, click the Format Painter button, select one data range for the new formatting, go back to the original cell ... rinse, wash, and repeat.

But here’s an insider tip: You don’t have to go through this time-consuming, back-and-forth process. Just double-click on the Format Painter button. Then every range that you select gets the new formatting — until you click the Format Painter button again to deactivate it. You’ll see that the paintbrush cursor sticks around even after you apply the formatting the first time.