Quick Tips: How to Copy Visual Formatting to Multiple Other Visuals in One Go Using Format Painter Tool in Power BI

When you create a report it’s highly likely that you’d like to copy other visuals’ formats from an already formatted visual using “Format Painter” tool in Power BI. Perhaps you already used this awesome tool available in Power BI Desktop.

As you see in the tooltip shown while hovering over the “Format Painter” tool you can simply copy formats from an already formatted visual to another visual. But what if you have a lot of similar visuals to be formatted (painted) like shown in the below screenshot that I have several card visuals on top of my page. One of them is formatted as desired but the rest must still be formatted.

Formatted/Unformatted Card Visuals in Power BI
Formatted/Unformatted Card Visuals

It would be good if I could paint all of them in one go right? So continue reading to see how we can do that.

Here is the trick:

  • Group all card visuals other than the one you’d like to pick the format from
  • Click the “Format Painter” tool to pick the visual format using the “Format Painter” tool
  • Paint the group (not each visual though)

Easy!

Did you know about this trick? Have you used this before? Is there any ways you’d like to share with others? Let us know in the comments section below.

5 thoughts on “Quick Tips: How to Copy Visual Formatting to Multiple Other Visuals in One Go Using Format Painter Tool in Power BI

  1. This is not good. First you have to select all cards and group, and them apply format Painter.
    Should be easier like Excel and Word, if you just double click at your card and them click into another cards, without group.
    And also if you have more cards in others pages you have to apply one by one.

    1. Hi Renato.

      Welcome to BIInsight.com and thanks for your feedback.
      I agree.
      You’re absolutely right, this is not an ideal method.
      I always miss the ability to select multiple objects on the canvas by simply clicking and selecting all objects in the area.
      But, currently the method explained here can improve the productivity just a bit.

      Cheers.

    1. Hi Felipe,

      Welcome to BIInsight.com.
      That’s indeed a good suggestion, but if your cards are NOT in order, then you have to sort them first from the “Tab order” from the “Selection Pane” which can make the process longer indeed.
      But at the end of the day, you have tidier report which is good in terms of accessibility of the report though.
      Thanks for sharing.

      Cheers.

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