Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 30, 2017)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
April has a table in her Word document. One row is formatted with a custom color fill to match the company's logo color. April now wants to copy that fill color to other rows. She was hoping to use the Format Painter, but that just copies the text format, not the fill color used in the table cells. April wonders if there is a way to copy the fill color from one row to another.
There are a few ways that you can approach this issue. One is to simply use the tools that are available in Word. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Colors dialog box.
After you apply the desired color, if you want to apply it elsewhere (perhaps in another table or in some cells you missed), all you need to do is select the cells and press F4. The shading is repeated on the selected cells.
If you need to do this quite a bit with a number of tables or in a number of documents, you may want to consider using a macro to do the shading. A handy little macro is the one below:
Sub ShadeTable() Dim backColor As Long Dim foreColor As Long If Selection.Information(wdWithInTable) Then With Selection.Tables(1) backColor = .Cell(1, 1).Shading.BackgroundPatternColor foreColor = .Cell(1, 1).Shading.ForegroundPatternColor .Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = backColor .Shading.ForegroundPatternColor = foreColor End With Else MsgBox "Put the insertion point in a table" End If End Sub
The macro shades an entire table based on the shading used in the first cell of the first row of the table. All you need to do is make sure you place the insertion point somewhere within the table before running it.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10932) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Copying Fill Color in a Table.
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2021-11-09 01:49:28
S_Pillay
Thank you so much! Really appreciate it.
Have a blessed day!
2021-06-25 08:43:59
Philip
thank you,sir
2021-03-20 01:51:26
Wayne Daniels
Allen, this tip rescued me from interminable searching for what I need to speed up my project. Thank you! Very well explained....
2020-05-08 17:56:57
Martin
And what do you do when there is no indication at any level of what the color is? None of the theme colors, no standard or custom colors. RGB are all showing 0
I have found this to be a problem quite often. I use tables a great deal and the only reliable way I have been able to come up with is to copy a row with the fill I want, paste it where needed and split it into the number of cells I need. Any that I want with no background are easy enough to clear, which has always worked.
2018-08-21 21:34:50
Marni Story
Thank you! I have been trying to figure out this very simple thing for months.
2018-05-11 19:10:01
Pierre
Worked perfectly! This helped me copy tricky custom colors across a complex table. Thanks Allen!
2018-01-02 08:46:38
Barry Thistlethwaite
Using the shading drop-down menu also puts the current color in the "Recent Colors" section of the menu so you can re-use it later. This is especially handy when using custom colors instead of choosing from the Theme color blocks--and helps even then if you don't remember which Theme color you applied.
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