Microsoft® Access® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

48

Macro Parts

Now that you're familiar with the basics of creating macros in Access 2010, this lesson reviews the parts of a macro. Macros consist of four basic parts: name, actions, arguments, and conditions. Although all these parts are not always used when creating a macro, the macro action and its parameters must always be specified. In addition to these four parts, macros also have a couple of other features that are worth noting. For example, TempVars allow you to store and retrieve data within a macro. This lesson discusses Access 2010 macros parts and provides some examples of how to build macros, using the Access 2010 Macro Designer, with each of these components.

LESSON SETUP

The only requirement to this lesson is that you understand the basics of macros in Access 2010, as discussed in the preceding two lessons. Otherwise, this lesson does not require any other specific knowledge of Access.

MACRO CHANGES IN ACCESS 2010

As mentioned earlier, Access 2010 has had a major overhaul to the Macro Designer tools. In previous versions of Access, the Macro Designer looked much more like the Table Designer: a grid-based layout where the user filled in the macro's values. This grid contained five columns, though only three were shown by default: Macro Name, Condition, Action, Arguments, and Comments. The user created a macro by adding a new row to the grid and filling in the appropriate values. Each row in the grid represented a different macro, which would be executed in sequence ...