May 23 2007

Use the Record Macro Feature in Excel

One of the easiest ways to begin learning how to use the Macro ability of excel is to use the “Record Macro” button. To begin recording a macro, goto Tools->Macro->Record New Macro. After you hit that button, any actions you perform will be recorded. When you are finished performing the actions hit the “Stop” button on the box that popped up when you began recording. To view the code of the actions that was recorded, goto Tools->Macro->Macros and click on macro that was just recorded and hit edit.

The macro (or VBA) section of excel works great to help you perform actions in a spreadsheet that you perform repeating on a consistant basis. It will save you much time and effort (as well as headaches) and by looking at the code you can begin to learn how the code works.

The next step (which we will be adding soon) is to learn some basic functions to assist the macro, such as for loops and other application functions, to increase the ability of the macro to perform the feats you would like. The expandability of the macro is its greatest feature, as it can perform almost any process that you can think of.

I will be adding some examples in a near future post as to what the macros can be specifically told to do through recording them.

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2 Comments on this post

Trackbacks

  1. Using the Visual Basic Editor wrote:

    [...] how you can get to the editor. To see this feature for your self the first thing you want to do is record a macro.  Try typing some text in a cell, maybe some copying and pasting, anything. Next were going to [...]

    October 5th, 2007 at 7:36 am
  2. Using a For Loop in a Macro | Excel Hints wrote:

    [...] you might want to check out a previous post I made Familiarizing with the Visual Basic Editor and Use the Record Macro Feature.  Basically, the purpose of a macro in Excel is to provide you with a way of quickly and easily [...]

    October 12th, 2008 at 10:16 am

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