Computer Questions

[Attalus]

First of all what is a macro? I understand that it is a single computer instruction that stands for a sequence of operations, but how can you make one? Could you put a block of text or a picture under, say, F8? And, how do you convert a bitmap image to a jpeg file? Thanks in advance.

[Animal]

Originally posted by Attalus: First of all what is a macro? I understand that it is a single computer instruction that stands for a sequence of operations, but how can you make one? Could you put a block of text or a picture under, say, F8? And, how do you convert a bitmap image to a jpeg file? Thanks in advance.

Macro's are a combination of keys that represent strings of commands, mostly used in Word Processors, spreadsheets etc... I suppose you could consider the Ctrl-Alt-Del as a semi macro. You could set up a macro to paste a certain block of text, or a picture I suppose, though I'm not really up on my macros too much.
To convert a bitmap to JPEG open the bitmap with photo editing software (MS Paint will work as well). Click File->Save As-> and change the document type to JPEG or any other format you wish. Voila!

[andrewas]

I dont suppose your up on Visual Basic programming? No? Then we do this the easy way.

I am terrible at remembering menu options, so these are taken from office XP. Earlier versions will require some experimentation.

Tools->record->new macro

Give it a name, set it to record in only the document your using. You can also set it to record in a template, in which case all documents created with that template will have the macro included.

Now you have to set a trigger for the macro. XP handles this differently from different versions, you get two buttons to select a trigger key or put a button on the toolbar. Both are pretty self explanatory. I dont have an earlier copy to hand to see how they do it, but its not that complicated.

Anyway, once you finish with that dialogue youll see a new tooldbar (with stop and pause buttons on it). Type text into your document, the macro will record every action and translate it to code for you. When your finished, hit the stop button.

Hit the trigger button/key you assigned, and the macro should put the text into your document. This is a good time to check for typos and suchlike.

You can edit the macro directly by going into tools->macros->macros. In this case your macro will probably look something like:

Sub Test()
Selection.TypeText Text:="testtesttest"
End Sub

[Attalus]

Thanks very much to both of you. [img]smile.gif[/img]