Macros!

[freebroc11]

Dear Fellow,
What are macros? What is the use of macros?

 

[SuperFerret]

Google defines a macro as: A computer-readable script used to execute a series of commands by means of one or a few keystrokes. Normally, macros are made by scripting the commands, then assigning the script to a key or combination of keys on the keyboard of a computer.

Basically most of the macro's you'll see on here are bits of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) scripts for automating tasks in Excel, or creating new Functions when one of the existing ones Excel offers doesn't quite fit your requirements.

They are very useful at speeding up those repetitive tasks, for example if you always save import files as the same name every time you could create a macro that will save it to the correct folder, as the correct filename and file extension with one click instead of many.

If you browse the Excel Questions and read some of the threads, you'll see plenty of questions/answers that show just how powerful macro's/VBA can be!

Hope this helps!

 

[Greg Truby]

It's sort of a legacy term, really. Way back in the day {we're talking Lotus 1-2-3 was the big dog in spreadsheets & Ronnie Reagan was in the White House}, we'd write down the shortcut keystrokes for a series of menu commands and some other jargon. These were "macros". Over the years the term has stuck and evolved to mean as SuperFerret cites from Google. In the case of Excel, you can take VBA way beyond what is typically meant by the term "macro". But the term is still used to describe pretty much any VBA programming in Excel (or those other, lesser, applications [like Word]).

 

[shg]

My working definition of an Excel macro is a Sub that takes no arguments; that seems to dovetail with people's expectations, and is consistent with what appears in the Macros dialog.