In Excel or Word, if you double click the Format Painter button, it will stay until you click it again or until you press the Esc key. This allows applying Format Painter to several areas consecutively.
In Power BI, the behavior is different: double click acts as two consecutive clicks. I.e. the button turns on like after one click and then like after another click. If you need to apply the same formatting to several visuals, you have to constantly click the Format Painter button after each time.
I report it here in issues because this behavior is inconsistent from other Microsoft products, so this is a bug report, not a feature request.
6 Comments
Daniil ,
What do you mean "double click"? Based on my test, when you click Format Painter in Excel and Power BI, they behave same. The different thing is that in Excel , you are able to select multiple cells at once and apply formatting, but in Power BI Desktop, you are able to select a visual at once.
If you want to apply formatting to several visuals at once, you can create report theme as described in this article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-report-themes.
Regards,
Lydia- Daniil
Kudo Kingpin
AnonymousLydia, Format Painter in Excel and Power BI do not behave the same.
By double click I mean double click in the common sense -- when you click twice quickly.
Try double clicking Format Painter in Excel, click on one cell, then release the mouse button, then note that you can still apply Format Painter to another cell because Format Painter stays. In Power BI, Format Painter will not be available after you use it once -- you will need to click the Format Painter button on the ribbon again.
Please let me know if it doesn't make sense -- I'll try to reword it or explain in a different way.
DMMAdvocate I
Anonymous The issue persists even with the new ribbon. Double-clicking the Format Painter button does not work, unfortunately.
Hi. This item appears unresolved. Could MS please enable double left mouse click on Format painter as per other MS products like Excel. If MS reviewer doesn't understand please discuss with another MS employee cognisant of other MS product functionality. Thanks
Daniil is correct, the "double-click" option to keep the Format Painter running, is still not working (Dec 2024) and I must say, it's a real pain. Surely it's an easy fix Microsoft I'm running a new(ish) and a 2016 Office suite on two laptops with Windows 11 and it's the same in both. Maybe it's ok in earlier OS.
