Word 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 19. Introducing Macros and Visual Basic

Macros let you can run several commands with the click of a button or the press of a key. If you find yourself using the same three or four commands over and over again, you can save time by recording those steps as a macro. You can assign the macro to a keyboard shortcut or to a button on the Quick Access toolbar. Then, when you need to run those commands, instead of having to use several keystrokes or ribbon commands, you can do it all with one stroke. And that’s just the beginning. If you’re interested, you can do much more with macros and the underlying programming language called Visual Basic.

This chapter won’t turn you in to a macro-programming wizard, but it will give you a firm grounding in the fundamentals. You learn how to record Word commands and actions as macros by showing Word what steps you want the macro to perform. Then, you get to look under the hood and see the Visual Basic programming code that Word writes as it records your actions. This chapter gives you a quick lesson in how to read and interpret Visual Basic code and how to get extra help understanding the language. If you’re interested in learning how you can tweak a macro, you can find that here too. If you’re game, grab a Jolt cola, turn up the volume on iTunes, and dig in.

Showing the Developer Tab

If you’re thinking about creating macros, that automatically makes you a Word developer—a person who creates (or, as programmers like to put it, develops) programs, ...