Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Using Auto Macros

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook all enable you to create macros that will run when the applications start or quit, or when you open or close a specific document, workbook, or presentation. In all cases, the trick lies in putting the macro in the right place, and giving the macro the correct name. (In PowerPoint, you must clear a couple of additional hurdles.)

These so-called Auto macros can come in handy when you want to modify the application itself when it starts—to load the most recently used document, for example. This technique is also effective when you need to modify a document before the user starts working on it—to automatically calculate an invoice number, for example.

Using Auto Macros in Word

Word responds to ...