Public Schedule Face-to-Face & Online Instructor-Led Training - View dates & book

excel

ResolvedVersion 2003

Zoe has attended:
Excel Intermediate course

Excel

what are macros?

Edited on Thu 17 Jul 2008, 17:03

RE: Excel

Hi Zoe,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for your first post; in answer to your question; Macros are covered in our Advanced course, but a little explanation would not be amiss.

A macro is a recording of mouse clicks and/or of keyboard entries which are recorded by Excel and played back (like a tape recording) whenever required, a macro is usually recorded to undertake mundane or repetitive tasks. Unless you are employing VBA you are not really writing macros, you are recording them, although Excel translates the recording into VBA script, which is editable using VBA.

To record a macro, go to the Menu command Tools>Macro and choose the option Record New Macro, name your Macro in the dialog box and observe Store macro in: drop down box, this gives you three choices, if you wish your macro to be available to you in every workbook you open, choose the Personal Macro Workbook option, the other two are self explanatory.
Observe the little floating toolbar which opens, the option to have your new macro work either Absolute (always in the same cells) or Relative, (within the same pattern from a chosen cell, but anywhere in the worksheet.)

Undertake the task you wish to record, when you have completed the task, click the Stop Recording button (the little square, usually blue) Excel will remember all your mouse clicks and key presses, and replay them when you go to the menu command Tools>Macro and choose Macros, select your named Macro and press the button Run.

This action can be automated by creating a button either on screen or on your toolbars and assigning the chosen macro to it, or by creating a Keyboard shortcut and assigning the macro to it.

I hope that has been of help, if so please click the resolved link, regards Pete

Excel tip:

Ctrl+d's double life

Suppose I have a formula in B1 that I wish to copy into B2:B10. I can select B1:B10 then press Ctrl+d to copy the formula down the selected range. Users generally ignore this shortcut in favour of double-clicking on the fill handle to copy down, but Ctrl+d is useful sometimes particularly when there is no data in surrounding columns to guide to how far the double-click method should copy formulae.

Ctrl+d has another use though. When I use the drawing toolbar to draw objects such as Text Boxes, Rectangles and Ovals onto a worksheet, Ctrl+d makes an instant duplicate of selected shapes. For example, I need five Text Boxes the same size. I draw one Text box and adjust it to the size I want, select it, then press Ctrl+d four times to get four identical copies.

View all Excel hints and tips

Connect with us:

0207 987 3777

Call for assistance

Request Callback

We will call you back

Server loaded in 0.12 secs.