Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Chapter 31. Recording Macros

• Using the Macro Recorder

• Behind the Scenes: The VBA Environment

• Adding Code to an Existing Macro

• Using Absolute and Relative References

• Macro Subroutines

• Using the Personal Macro Workbook

• Going On from Here

A macro is a set of instructions that tells Microsoft Excel (or another application) to perform one or more actions for you. Macros are like computer programs, but they run completely within Excel. You can use them to automate tedious or frequently repeated tasks.

Macros can carry out sequences of actions much more quickly than you could yourself. For example, you can create a macro that enters a series of dates across one row of a worksheet, centers the date in each cell, and then applies a border format to the row. Or ...