I tried the increasingly-useless Google to search the web and this forum, and waded through several results pages of a forum search, but I can’t seem to find anyplace on the web or here discussing the basic notion of: copying the format of a paragraph and then pasting or applying the copied format to a (different) selected paragraph or paragraphs.
One page on the web indicated such a feature exists on the Mac version of Scrivener, using the shortcut keys. One forum result seemed to indicate a wish for a “format painter.”
Other than that, I don’t see it mentioned for Windows, or even a discussion of it here (which seems unusual by itself).
Does this feature exist in Scrivener 1.2.5.0 or in the newer release?
A “format painter” is something we do have planned for the future. Right now though you can use the copy text formatting and copy ruler formatting tools. They are located in their respective sub-menus in the Format menu. So Format/Font/Copy Font, and Format/Text/Copy Ruler. You’ll find the shortcuts there as well.
(EDIT: Can the proposed feature include a simple improvement on the way the ruler bar works? It makes positioning much easier when the paragraph or tab position selected on the ruler causes a dashed line to drop down the page from the ruler, so you can visually see where your text is going to move.
Also, the current Format>Text>Paste Ruler appears to be a one-time event, emptying the copy buffer, so it cannot be re-used.
FORTUNATELY you can paste the format across several selected paragraphs at once!)
Are you trying to fix up imported documents so that they all have the same formatting? If so, check out Documents/Convert/Formatting to Default Text Style. That feature will homogenise all formatting in the selected documents to a single default (set in Tools/Options..., “Editor” tab). It’s a bit like pasting into Notepad and then into another word processor to clean out all the formatting.
This has been in the software for some time now. You can read up on how to use the feature in §15.4.3 of the user manual, starting on page 146. If you are a long-time user, do note the highlighted message at the bottom of that page. Given that the Format Bar can be customised, we would have had to have blown away your settings to add the button in the update, and we naturally didn’t want to do that.
