How to paste in Google Sheets with formatting

If you choose to “paste with formatting,” any formatting applied to the content you are copying (such as font style, color, bold, italic, underline, cell borders, etc.) will be preserved in the destination cells. Pasting with formatting in Google Sheets is important because it allows you to preserve the visual appearance and layout of your content as you move it between different sources or documents.

We have a dataset consisting of the results of students, where conditional formatting is applied such that the cells of the students who passed are highlighted in green color. We wish to copy the column containing the numbers and the formatting into the same sheet. To achieve this, we have three methods available. The following steps will guide you to use these methods.

Method 1: Paste Formatting Using the Paint Format option

Step 1 – Select the range of cells

• Select the range of cells whose formatting is to be copied

Step 2 – Click on the Paint Format option

• After selecting the range of cells, click on the  Paint Format option

Step 3 – Select the range of cell

• Open the sheet where you want to paste the formatting. You can also paste it on the same sheet
• Select the range of cells where you want to paste the format and the format will automatically get pasted

Method 2: Paste Data with Formatting using the Paste option

Step 1 – Select the range of Cell

• Select the range of cells you want to copy

Step 2 – Copy the Data

• After selecting the range of cells, right-click anywhere on the selected range to open the context menu
• From the context menu, click on the Copy option

Step 3 – Select the Cell

• After copying  the data, click on the cell where you want to paste the data

Step 4 – Paste the Data

• Right-click in the selected cell to open the context menu
• From the context menu, click on Paste to get the required result.

Method 3: Paste Data with Format using Paste special option

Step 1 – Step 1 – Select the range of Cell

• Select the range of cells you want to copy

Step 2 – Copy the Data

• After selecting the range of cells, right-click anywhere on the selected range to open the context menu
• From the context menu, click on the Copy option

Step 3 – Select the Cell

• After copying  the data, click on the cell where you want to paste the data

Step 4 – Paste the Values

• Right-click on the selected cell to open the context menu
• From this context menu, click on the Paste Special option and a right-side menu will appear
• From the right-side menu, click on the Only Values option

Step 5 – Paste the Formatting

• After pasting the values, Select these values and right-click in the selected range to open the context menu
• From this context menu, click on the Paste Special option and a right-side menu will appear
• From this right-side menu, click on Only Format to get the required result