Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Recording Simple Macros

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all let you record macros. Access, and FrontPage do not have macro recording capabilities—a significant restriction, because you won't be able to use the recorder to capture VBA commands that correspond to typical user interactions. Although Outlook lacks a macro recorder, you can record macros while creating a message.

In theory, when you turn on the macro recorder, VBA "watches" as you perform some action or series of actions. When you turn off the recorder, you can replay the resulting recorded macro to replicate that series of actions.

In practice, you'll more often use the macro recorder to eliminate the tedious steps of creating a macro. Unfortunately, a recorded macro rarely solves a ...