Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V to copy/paste formats not working in Excel

Dear Michael Schuldenfrei

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. I am happy to help you

According to my search in the official documentation, I really didn't find the shortcut you mentioned: Keyboard shortcuts in Excel - Microsoft Support

I've also tested it, and if you use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V directly, it will paste the format by default, so if you want to choose the pasting method, you can try to use Ctrl+Alt+V：

I look forward to your reply. Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator

Thanks for the reply. I also can't find any reference to it in the docs, but unless I am going completely senile, this keyboard combination existed till recently. It certainly still exists and works as expected in Word and PowerPoint. So whether it was an undocumented feature, or a figment of my imagination, can we have it as a feature request?

Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V don't help here as the idea is to copy ONLY the format and not the cell contents.

These keyboard shortcuts to copy-paste ONLY formatting are better than the formatting brush because they "remember" the copied format and you can apply it again and again on different cells and ranges, even if you did other work on the spreadsheet.

Dear Michael Schuldenfrei

Good day!

I completely agree with you, this is indeed a great addition to the current functionality of Excel, thanks for pointing this out. Microsoft is constantly working to improve the functionality of its O365 products, and such suggestions are greatly appreciated. You can go to the feedback community to create a new entry or vote for it.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator

Hi there. Since the very old days of Office and Windows itself, ctrl+c / ctrl+v was to "copy/ paste everything" whilst ctrl+shift+c/ ctrl+shift+v was to "copy/ paste formats". As Michael says, the former create a clipboard entry whilst the latter are stored separately and each can be applied multiple times (i.e. you can copy-paste an entire content to then later paste formats you had copied earlier). This was from back in the days when Office and Windows were actually best controlled through keyboards and you could "type" key sequences to follow through the menues. Then Microsoft went to move more towards mouse control and complicated multi-key commands, then it moved back to what we have today which is again more of a keystroke sequence type of control. The "old" shortcuts had been maintained throughout and, indeed, until very recently -it can only be a few days, on my version of Office- these have worked. So somebody must now have gone in and took them out of the code. That action must somewhere be documented within the updates. Can we please undo that??

As an alternative, you can add Paste Formatting to the Quick Access Toolbar. Go to File>Options>Quick Access Toolbar. Select All Commands in the dropdown at the top. Scroll down to Formatting (Paste Formatting). Select it, click Add in the center, and then OK. Anytime you want to paste the formatting, copy the cell or range, click on the location where you want to paste it, and click on this icon in the Quick Access Toolbar to paste only the formatting.

Another quick way is to use the Format Painter. It is especially useful if you want to copy the formatting from a single cell to a range of cells. Select the cell you want to copy the formatting, click on Format Painter in the Clipboard section of the Home ribbon, and click and drag the selection where you want to add the formatting. This can also be added to the Quick Access Toolbar if desired.

Thanks Max. I'm glad there is someone else out there who had the same experience. I was beginning to think I had imagined it... So MSFT - any chance of getting this fixed?

Thanks Rich-M. The wonderful thing about Ctrl+Shift+C/V is that it was unrelated to separate Copy-Paste activity. I can copy a format once using the keyboard shortcut and then repeatedly paste that format in other cells, even if I copy and paste other different items in between. For people working on large complex spreadsheets, it is really important.

I don't paste formats very frequently, but I can certainly see how being able to continue to paste even after making other changes is helpful. The regular copy/paste you used to be able to do that also, and I used that all the time to continue to paste the same thing. Then they changed it so that if you did anything else you lost the copy and had to copy it again. Had to find the workaround to use the Clipboard to paste from so that I didn't have to continually go to different sheets to copy the item again and again.

So this is really, REALLY annoying:

• Powerpoint: ctrl+shift+c/ +v respectively, still work for copy/ paste formats.

• Word: ctrl+shift+c/ +v respectively, no longer work. However, replace the shift with the alt key, and it works: ctrl+alt+c/ +v is now working for copy/ paste formats in Word.

• Outlook: ctrl+shift+c/ +v respectively, still work for copy/ paste formats.

Which odd-thinking individual or programmer team found it useful to change what were consistent shortcuts between applications, to different shortcuts - within the same office package??! I mean, really???

As to the community here, I am still always baffled that so-called Microsoft Agents/ Moderators here, don't seem to be equipped with the full product knowledge, to be able to answer these questions. Anyhow.

So the above is a fact, the key sequence has simply been changed in Word, the functionality has not been removed.

For those who responded with the hint to the format painter - thanks but that is off-topic. Who uses a mouse...

These people here seem to have found a solution to customizing shortcuts:

How do I change the keyboard shortcut for paste formatting (format - Microsoft Community

Copied from there for ease of reference:

- user asks:

Since my MS Word has recently been updated, the keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting formatting have changed to Alt+Ctrl+C and Alt+Ctrl+V, respectively. However, I have become conditioned to using Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V. But now, when I do the latter key combination, it pastes from the clipboard as plain text (without formatting). When I try using the new key combination to paste the formatting (Alt+Ctrl+V), a popup mentions creating a clip or something, while my webcam shows up on the lower-left corner of the screen. When I went to change the keyboard shortcut for the paste formatting (File>Options>Customize Ribbon>"Keyboard Shortcuts:" Customize button>Blog Post Tab), the only one I could find on the list was "CopyFormat" and nothing called "PasteFormat." The "Commands" are listed in alphabetical order, and the list goes from "nonpublic" straight to "Research", which between those two should be the "CopyFormat" command.

- answer given:

The problem is the selection of the Blog Post Tab category, which for some reason has an incomplete list of commands associated with it. Instead, choose the All Commands category (near the bottom of the Categories list), and you'll find PasteFormat where you expect it.

THAT is a good answer.

After 25 years with Office, I had not know that you can actually customize all keyboard shortcuts.

Should have learnt that back in my training days.

Good day to all here!

OMG this is soo hilarious!

I have worked with CAD, BIM and Office products for 30 years and absolutely am a keyboard shortcut fanatic. What is amusing to me is to see newer users -think anyone who has used the software less than 10 years (haha) - entirely dependent on ribbons, icons and menu picks. I have laminated a couple copies of the BIM shortcuts which I adorn their monitors with for the 1st 3 months in office. Really this is the software that most of my users spend 7 hours a day operating. A 0.05 second time saving on every action is a big chunk of time.
The whole Alt-Char-char-char thing kind of drives me crazy.

Finding support staff who know nothing about versions from 20 years ago (or keyboard shortcuts in general) is not surprising.

Thank you to those who cut their teeth on the version where everything was a keyboard shortcut ("after 25 years") and contributed not only their frustration, here but some awesome resources. Kudos!

I just had an interesting conversation with MS Copilot who told me my users can save 70 hours annually by using Revit keyboard shortcuts.
I asked them to break it down...
Certainly! While I don’t have specific studies on the time saved by using Autodesk Revit keyboard shortcuts, I can provide a general estimate based on existing research.

The premise of our calculations is based on observations that most people lose an average of 2 seconds per minute of work by switching back and forth from their mouse instead of using analogous keyboard shortcuts¹. Let’s break down how this estimation was derived:

1. Mental Preparation: When using a mouse, mentally preparing to perform an action takes approximately 1.35 seconds².

2. Moving Hands: Transitioning from the mouse to the keyboard takes about 0.4 seconds².

3. Pointing with a Mouse: Pointing (excluding the click) takes around 1.1 seconds².

While I am not sure I am on board with those times, but the link there was an interesting read

Of course I am not going to calculate the time I just wasted amusing myself in the forums looking for an answer for something microsft "fixed"