How to Use Format Painter

This article to describes how to use Format Painter to automatically apply formatting changes you make to one object to similar items without having to manually repeat all the styling changes, one by one. 

Requirements

A Displayr document with shapes, text items, or R items that you want to apply formatting changes to.

Method

Shapes

Let's say I have several shapes in my document and I want to change the color of each of them from blue to red. In addition, I want to add arrow heads to each of the lines below the shapes.

Copying formatting changes to one shape at a time

1. Click on the Square shape.
2. In the object inspector, change the Fill color to Red.
3. In the toolbar, select Format Painter . Notice that the feature is now enabled, whereas before it was greyed out.
   Next you will change the fill color of the circle shape to red:
4. Click the circle shape on the page. Notice that Format Painter has copied the formatting changes you made to the square shape to the circle shape.
5. To disable Format Painter, click anywhere in the white area of your document or click Format Painter again.
   Next you will change the thickness of one of the lines, add arrow heads to both ends and then copy your formatting changes to the other line:
6. Click the line shape on the left.
7. Change the Line width to 4.
8. Change the Begin arrow type to and the End arrow type to .
9. In the toolbar, select Format Painter and then click the line shape on the right.
10. Disable Format Painter, as in Step 5 above.
    The results are as follows:
    

Copying formatting changes to multiple shapes

1. Click on the shape that you want to copy your formatting changes from.
2. In the toolbar, double-click Format Painter.
3. Click the other objects you want to change. Note, you will need to click each object one at a time, rather than multi-select to update the formatting.
4. To disable Format Painter, either click the Format Painter button again, or click anywhere in the white area of your dashboard.

Text Boxes and Callouts

Let's say you want to change the Titles (Text Box 1 & Text Box 2) to Bold, but leave the rest of the text unchanged. You can use Format Painter to copy formatting changes to selected portions of the text rather than all of it.

1. In the textbox on the left, highlight the text Text Box 1.
2. In the object inspector, change the font to Bold.
3. In the toolbar, select Format Painter.
4. In the text box on the right, highlight the text Text Box 2.
   
   The results are as follows:
   

Calculations

You can also copy the formatting changes you make from one calculation to another.

The background color for the calculation on the left was changed to Green with 7 decimal places.

To copy these formatting changes to the calculation on the right:

1. Click the calculation on the left.
2. From the toolbar, select Format Painter.
3. Click the calculation on the right.
4. Disable Format Painter.
   The results are as follows:
   

Next

Customizing Online Reports/Dashboards