Running Macros

Although each of the Office applications offers myriad ways to run macros, three simple methods in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and FrontPage will get you going:

• Choose Tools, Macro, Macros to open the Macros dialog box, which contains a list of all currently available macros. Use this technique for macros you run only infrequently.

• Before you start recording a macro, you can choose to assign the macro to a menu (Word only) or a specific key combination (Word or Excel).

• After recording a macro, you can assign it to a menu, a toolbar button, or a key combination.

→ For details on setting up macros as menu items, see "Customizing Built-In Menus".

In addition, you can set macros to run each time you start an application. For example, you can record a macro that maximizes the Excel window whenever you start Excel. Or you can set up a macro to run every time you open or close a specific document. You might use this technique to run a macro that queries a database and updates a letter with current customer information. You can assign a macro to a picture or a piece of text, or to run at a specific time. Your macros can even take over built-in Office functions such as printing. For example, if you want to track printer usage in your office, create a macro that counts the number of pages in a document or worksheet, adds a new row to an Excel list with the user's name, the date and time, and the number of pages, and then sends the job to the printer.