Macros

Automating your actions

Tired of repeating certain common actions in Microsoft Word just to create your perfect document? Do you want to speed up the designing process and entering text in your document at the click of a button? Well, now you can. In Microsoft Word, you have the opportunity to automate your actions by creating macros.

What are macros?

A macro is the ability to record actions performed in Microsoft Word and to store those actions in a programming language understood by Microsoft Word known as Visual Basic.

How do I record a macro?

There are two ways to record a macro. The first way is through the toolbar. It should contain buttons that look like the following:

Or, you can go through the following menu commands:

How do I create a macro?

The simplest way to create a macro is to let Microsoft Word record a macro for you and you do the work of designing and/or entering text into your document. Okay. So let's try it. Choose "Record New Macro..." from the Tools menu command. The following window will appear:

Type the macro name "RecordMyFirstMacro" without any spacing in the name. Press the Keyboard button and type a key combination in the Shortcut Key field.

Press the OK button when finished. You are now ready to record your actions in a macro. This means doing your usual thing of entering text and designing you Word document. When finished, stop the macro.

You should now be able to duplicate your actions through the macro by pressing your key combination.