[Issue] Format Paintbrush in Impress

[sswbarnard]

Is there a way to enable Format Paintbrush to work in Impress ? This feature is available in MS Powerpoint.

[acknak]

Yes, that's kind of strange, isn't it?

It seems the format paintbrush only works on graphic objects, not on selected text or layout objects.

What to say? It's Impress--anything can happen.

Here are the active issues:
Issue 73769: Format Paintbrush always disabled
Issue 87271: Enhance the Format Paintbrush function of presentation

You can register there and add a vote (up to two) for either of those.

[sswbarnard]

Thanks. Looks like the matter is being addressed, I guess it's only a matter of time before it's fixed.

[Phil]

I guess it's only a matter of time before it's fixed.

You're right there. Unfortunately the target milestone is set to OOo Later for the first issue, and for the second one none is defined yet.
This lets me presume that it may take quite a long time until this is fixed.
What you can do is to register and vote for the issues.

What I usually do, if I need a certain textbox to have the same format as another one, is to copy the whole textbox and to copy the new text via Paste - Special as Unformatted text into the copied textbox.

KR, phil

[acknak]

Yep. Unfortunately, "OOo Later" means essentially "someday when we have nothing else left to do," or "don't hold your breath." Phil's advice is good: vote for it if you really need the feature.

As far as your task at hand...

All of OOo, including Impress, is based heavily on "styles" and consequently that is the best supported and easiest way to work.

A style is nothing more than a collection of format settings, and it can be "applied" to as many objects as you like. All objects with the same style will have the same appearance, and changing the style definition will change the appearance of all the objects that use that style, so they maintain a consistent appearance.

So if you want to make two layout text boxes have the same appearance, just apply the same style to both.

You can create a style from the object that looks the way you want, then apply that style to other boxes.

You may want to have a look at the Impress Guide, especially the section on styles in Chapter 6 ("Formatting Graphic Objects"). If that doesn't get you started, then just tell us where you're stuck.

Using styles is a little harder to learn than the format paintbrush, but it's more powerful and even easier in the long run. Also, the concepts and methods are consistent across all the OOo applications, so you only need to learn it once.

[Phil]

acknak, you are absolutely right - styles are really a powerful instrument to work with!
It should in any case be given preference to the workaround I have proposed, unless it is only a single text frame to change.

BR, phil