What Can You Do with a Macro?

Most of the time, you use the individual programs that make up Microsoft Office interactively—typing text, inserting graphics, formatting, saving, and printing. That’s fine when you’re creating new content, but it’s no fun at all when you have to perform the same task regularly. Even a procedure that requires only three or four mouse clicks can become unbearable if you have to repeat it several times a day. The problem is even more acute if you perform any weekly tasks using Word or Excel where the step-by-step instructions are so complicated you have to print out a cheat sheet. If you have any such complicated task on your daily or weekly to-do list, you’re a prime candidate to create a macro that automates that task using a single command.

Macros can be surprisingly short—even a one-line macro can perform helpful tasks—or they can run for hundreds of lines, with loops and variables and input boxes, and other elements you normally associate with a full-fledged programming language.