As always, I hope you are well. As per my earlier blog post I am going to be offering two segments here:
Excel Novice 5 min tip
Todays’s 5 minute tip is , this week, to learn 2 keyboard shortcuts for things you do most often. Repeat the same thing next week. In the space of 3 months you will have 24 shortcuts. You can download a keyboard shortcut here. I suggest you start with Ctrl and X to cut and Ctrl and V to paste.
Excel Adept – Creating a macro
If you work with Excel a lot the chances are you will be repeating the same set of actions every week or month. One of the ways to automate that is to record the steps in a macro and then play that back. So that is what we are going to cover here. MrExcel has an excellent handout on macro creation .Couple of things to note before we begin.
- If you plan to use the macro with other workbooks, save it into the Personal Macro workbook.
- The workbook you create the macro in needs to be a macro-enabled workbook (check the File – Save As option)
- Turn on Relative Recording before you start.
- Macro names – no blanks, first character must be a letter.
- Activate the Developer tab (File – Options – Customize Ribbon – tick Developer box on right hand side)
You can view a video below on each…
Part one – getting prepared
[fvplayer src=”https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/the-excel-expert/Macro_video_01.mp4″]
Part two – recording the macro
[fvplayer src=”https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/the-excel-expert/macro_video_02.mp4″]
Part three – make it easy to use – add an icon to the quick access toolbar.
[fvplayer src=”https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/the-excel-expert/Macro_video_03.mp4″]
It’s well worth while experimenting with macros particularly for things that you do over and over or – for example – if you always have to add the same printing set up.