{"id":5788,"date":"2014-02-14T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T07:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5788"},"modified":"2014-02-16T10:27:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T17:27:41","slug":"become-a-word-developer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5788","title":{"rendered":"Become a Word Developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"word_icon\" People who use Word as a mere word processor aren’t even scratching the surface of what it can do. The program’s power is vast and intimidating. It goes beyond writing and formatting text. Word also contains tools that let you completely overhaul and customize the program.
\n
\nIt’s a topic I’d love to write about, and I might just do so either as an eBook or online series. Most people refer to it by the shorthand techno tern, macro<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A macro is a series of commands you can string together within Word. It’s a shortcut. So if you find yourself performing the same actions over and over, you can customize that routine into a single command. The command can be issued manually, assigned to a keyboard shortcut, or even placed onto the Ribbon. That’s a lot of power.<\/p>\n

Before getting nitty and gritty, the nerd in me requires a definition: macro<\/em> is short for macroinstruction<\/em>. It’s an ancient term that pretty much means a shortcut.<\/p>\n

Back in the old days, macroinstructions could be elegantly simple or cryptically complex. They provided protonerds with tools necessary to automate redundant procedures. That’s how macros are used in Word today.<\/p>\n

Years ago, macros may have had their genesis as simple shortcuts. Today, they’re full-on modifications to the program that can save time and completely overwhelm the neighbors. Word nerds probably get a lot of dates by demonstrating their macro prowess in bars and taverns.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not.<\/p>\n

To begin the Word macro journey, you need to unveil the hidden Developer tab on the Ribbon.<\/p>\n

The Developer tab isn’t a big secret. Exposing it doesn’t sound any klaxons and it definitely won’t get in your way. Just follow these steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In Word, click the File tab.<\/li>\n
  2. Choose the Options command to display the Word Options window.<\/li>\n
  3. From the left side of the window, choose Customize Ribbon.<\/li>\n
  4. On the left side of the window, choose Main Tabs or All Tabs from the Customize the Ribbon drop-down menu.<\/li>\n
  5. In the list of tabs, place a check mark by the Developer item.<\/li>\n
  6. Click the OK button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Developer tab inhabits the Ribbon on the right end, as shown in Figure 1.<\/p>\n

    \"Figure<\/a>

    Figure 1. The Developer tab, visible and ready for action in Word 2013. (Click to embiggen.)<\/p><\/div>\n

    To get a hint at what’s possible by using the Developer tab, look back in the Wambooli Time Machine to a blog post<\/a> I made a year ago regarding those fill-in-the-blank items for Word templates.<\/p>\n

    Over the next few weeks I’ll be running a series of lessons on how to create and run Macros in Word. Hopefully, if the series is popular, I’ll move into other topics, such as document customization and automation. It should be fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The vastness of Microsoft’s Word program continues to overwhelm me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,19],"class_list":["post-5788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-word","tag-word_macro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5788"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5815,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5788\/revisions\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}