Setting Up Keyboard Shortcuts and Toolbar Buttons for Your Macros

What makes macros especially useful is being able to run them with the press of a few keys or the click of a button. When you record your own macro, assigning these is part of the process. However, when you paste the code in directly, like when sharing macros with other people, which we'll be doing soon as we begin posting some of our favorites, you skip that step. Fortunately, it's easy enough to manually make and change those assignments.

First, go to the Tools menu and click on Customize.



To change the keyboard shortcuts, click on Keyboard... at the bottom of the window.



You'll want to scroll down in the Categories window and click on Macros and then choose the macro you're trying to modify from the list on the right side. Then click in the "Press new shortcut key" box and hit the key combination you'd like to use. If that combination is already in use, the current assignment will show up underneath the box. At that point, you can decide whether to overwrite it or try a different combination, and once you've decided on the one to use, you can click Assign, and the key combination will show up under "Current keys."



To add a button to your toolbar for easy access, click on the Commands tab. Scroll down and click on Macros and you'll see the list of saved macros populate the right side of the window. You can then drag the one you want to use to your toolbar.



To edit the appearance of the button, make sure that the button itself is still highlighted in the toolbar and click Modify Selection. A menu will pop up that allows you to change the name, assign icons, group your buttons, etc.



With just a little bit of effort, macros can save you a lot of time in your daily work. Next week, I'll be posting my favorite macro, which saves me thousands of keystrokes a day.