Format Painter not working with new update

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I updated the power BI version released in October and since then, we realized that the format painter isn't working. This makes formatting a real problem. Any solutions? 

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous Are you referring to adding custom colors? I ran into this yesterday and it appears that it just kicks you out if you include the "#" in the hex code. If you use only the number and paste that in, it takes it and works.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Seth , 

I really appreciate your help.

I haven't used any custom colors. I just used the card visual across a page with different visuals interacting with it (something I have been doing in various reports for a while to highlight the key numbers), and when I tried just copying the format from one to another, I saw that the paintbrush icon which should show up on clicking the format painter is not showing up, and this happened during the first report I started working on after the update.

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

What version of power bi desktop are you test? Can you please share a sample pbix file for test?

BTW, I test with 2.75.5649.582 64-bit (November 2019) and the painter works well. (windows store version)

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the detailed explanations @v-shex-msft  and @Seth_C_Bauer 

The best possible solution to this problem is keeping an eye out on imported visuals (from the market place or external downloads) as their compatibility may change with updates. I have started emphasizing more on visuals which imply verified visuals by Microsoft or not updating power BI unless I am completely done with a dashboard so I don't have to make major changes in case the formatting breaks. 

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-shex-msft , 

Turns out that format painter wasn't working only with additional visuals from the marketplace. Not something usual, the visual I was using was a timeline 2.1.1 slicer. This is still not working for some reason though I just copied and pasted the slicer across with changes in data manually for now. 

[v-shex-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I test with a few scenarios but the format painter seems not works for type custom visuals. (official visuals[same type and different type]: succeed, official to custom: fail, custom visuals[same type and different type]: fail)
According to the test result, I think the format painter may not work on custom visuals. 
Regards,

XIaoxin Sheng

[Anonymous]

Agreed @v-shex-msft , The best way to go about using custom visuals would be to copy them and carefully replace any values depending on the requirements and checking that the filters affecting the visual are managed as well. These do slow down the report building though.