Excel 2010 Bible

Part VI: Programming Excel with VBA

802

Creating VBA Macros

Excel provides two ways to create macros:

l (^) Turn on the macro recorder and record your actions.
l Enter the code directly into a VBA module.
The following sections describe these methods.

Recording VBA macros

In this section, I describe the basic steps that you take to record a VBA macro. In most cases, you

can record your actions as a macro and then simply replay the macro; you needn’t look at the code

that’s automatically generated. If simply recording and playing back macros is as far as you go with

VBA, you don’t need to be concerned with the language itself (although a basic understanding of

how things work doesn’t do any harm).

Recording your actions to create VBA code: The basics

The Excel macro recorder translates your actions into VBA code. To start the macro recorder,

choose Developer ➪ Code ➪ Record Macro (or, click the Record Macro icon on the left side of

the status bar). Excel displays the Record Macro dialog box, shown in Figure 39.7.

FIGURE 39.7

The Record Macro dialog box.

The Record Macro dialog box presents several options:

l Macro Name: The name of the macro. Excel proposes generic names, such as Macro1,

Macro2, and so on.

l Shortcut Key: You can specify a key combination that executes the macro. The key com-

bination always uses the Ctrl key. You can also press Shift when you enter a letter. For

example, pressing Shift while you enter the letter H makes the shortcut key combination

Ctrl+Shift+H.