MS Excel - Format Painter not working

[rockraider]

Hi all, not sure if this is the right forum, so please move if it's not.

Computer Info:
OS: Windows XP SP3
Computer Make/Model: Dell XPS 710
RAM: 3070 MB
Hard Drive space: 750 GB
Sound card: Creative SB X-Fi Audio
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
AV program: avast! Free edition
Legitimate (i.e. I paid for them) copies of both Windows XP and MS Excel 2007.

Not sure if I need to include anything else, so if you need more info just ask.
So, here's the problem. Yesterday I was having problems with MS Excel's Format Painter option. I have used this feature many times in the past and have had no problems with up until now. I select the cells that I want to take the format of, click the button, and the it deactivates itself almost immediately. This will happen as many times as I will put up with it. I have tried to restart Excel, and even Windows, but that does nothing. I can't think of any reason it would suddenly refuse to work, but hey, it's Microsoft, anything it possible! I wish there was more I could say about this, but it's all I really know. :/ (Of course, I could just format the area to look like the other one, but I feel that defeats the whole point of the tool)

[rockraider]

Update: After just doing other things in Excel I decided to try using format painter again and it works just fine. I don't know why, didn't do anything but copy/paste and writing in text in cells. So yea, every is fine now it seems. >.>

[Geek-9pm]

You are welcome.
We have been using our  Transparent Help Robot Beta and glad to here it is working for you.

[soybean]

Are you aware of two modes of using Format Painter?  If you single-click on it, the first applying of it to a cell or range of cells applies the copied format and then cancels any further applying from that just-initiated action.  If you select a cell as the source format and then double-click on Format Painter, you can repeatedly apply that format without again clicking on the Format Painter icon.  To stop this, hit the Esc key.