How To Use The Format Painter In Storyline 360

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Do you recognize this? You’re working on an e-learning project and see that the text objects or shapes in your e-learning project look a little different every time. You can’t deliver your e-learning project like this. I’m Mark Spermon and in this video, I’ll share a practical tip on how you can copy an object’s layout to other objects within Articulate Storyline. This allows you to deliver your module to the client with a consistent look.

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The Format Painter

Articulate Storyline has a practical tool to copy the layout of an object: The Format Painter.

The Format Painter allows you to copy the following traits of an object:

  • The color of an object
  • The color of the border
  • The style of the border Dotted, striped or solid
  • Effects like shadow or glow
  • Status of an object
  • Text alignment & enumerations
  • Text color
  • Text size
  • Font style

That’s enough theoretical stuff. So let’s see how the Format Painter works in practice.

Here, I have a slide in Articulate Storyline with 4 different buttons. And every button also has different shapes. The left button is the proper button and I want to copy the objects or the shapes of this button to the other buttons.

In order to do so, I:

  • select this button
  • go to the Format Painter
  • then click the button to which I want I want to copy these traits.

I have now copied the traits of one object, the left button, to the right button.

But you can also copy the traits of one object to multiple objects and you once again do this by selecting the object of which you want to copy the traits.

You go to the Format Painter, but this time, you double-click it instead of just a single click. You see that it has now been selected.

And now, you can then click the objects to which you want to copy the traits. And this doesn’t just work for one slide, but also for other slides.

When you’re done copying, you once again click the Format Painter. You see it’s been deselected and right now, you can click objects without copying the layout.

Storyline also has a shortcut combination which does the same as the Format Painter:

  • Ctrl + Shift + C to copy the layout of a selected object.
  • Ctrl + Shift + V to apply the layout to a new object.

Here I have two text objects. When I select everything in the first text object and then press Ctrl + Shift + C and go to the second text object and once again select all text and click Ctrl +Shift + V and you’ll see that the layout of this object has been copied.

This shortcut combination doesn’t just work for text objects. It also works for other objects like shapes or buttons. Here, I have a button. I once again click Ctrl + Shift + C, select the other button, press Ctrl + Shift + V and you see that the layout of the button has also been copied.


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