Paint Format : Google Doc's most useful time saving tool

After moving to only using Google Doc's for content creation one of the few but vital things I found to be lacking was the support for applying the same format to multiple sections at a time in a document.

After some searching I found the solution was the Paint format icon :

To be honest I had never really noticed this icon before and had presumed it was related to images. In fact this turns out to be the most useful and underrated Google doc feature.

Example of  Paint Format usage

A typical use case is you have a document with lots of text in it but some of the text in various places requires to be different. For example below I would like every line with a command starting # to be 'Courier New' with Font size of 10 :

Its very time consuming (especially in very large documents) to go to each line individually and select 'Courier New' with Font size of 10 each time.

Fast Track Process - Single Change

• Define the first line as you would like e.g. 'Courier New' with Font size of 10
• Press the 'Paint format' icon once and it will be grey

• Use the mouse to highlight the full line you want to be the same
• The line will now automatically change to 'Courier New' with Font size of 10

 Fast Track Process - Multiple Changes

• In the above example the change only occurs for one selection. 
• In large doc's we need to be able to apply the same format for many lines
• Press the 'Paint format' icon twice and it will be grey
• Every line you now highlight will change  to the new format
• Disable by a single click to the 'Paint format' icon