How to Change Formats Quicker in Excel and Word

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Microsoft’s ‘find and replace’ function is a lot more powerful than most people think.  More than just a way to replace text, it is actually possible to do a search and replace on formatting as well!

Quick Formatting in Word

Tech blog Codejacked recently talked about how he could change fonts quickly by clicking on the ‘more button’ in the ‘Find and Replace’ feature of Microsoft Word.  He went on to state the following:

“Changing fonts is just the tip of the iceberg. This technique can be used with any sort of formatting (paragraphs, styles, etc.)  Also, be sure to click on the Special button to see the options that are available there (Any Digit, Any Letter, etc.)  These wildcards and special symbols (along with plain text) can be used in combination with the formatting criteria.  For example, it’s possible to change all negative numbers to red this way, by specifying the Find What as a minus sign followed by the Any Digit notation and by specifying the Replace With as nothing but with a font color of red”

Quick Formatting in Excel

Well after some investigation, it turns out similar functionality can be found in MS-Excel (Not for PowerPoint unfortunately).  Just click the ‘Options’ button in Excel ‘Find and Replace’ to get access to these extra features.

With this, I can find and replace a certain type of cell format, or just select the format from a pre-existing cell. While there is a time and place for using the ‘Excel format painter‘, this ‘find and replace’ feature makes more complicated format changes much faster.

Do you know any other quick formatting tricks for Microsoft Office?  Let us know in the comments!