Sending Your Document Via Email with Outlook

You can send your Excel workbooks via email with Outlook directly from Excel. You have a choice to send to either one recipient or to a distribution list of multiple recipients. The nice part is that you don't have to leave Excel to send your documents to others.

Sending to One Recipient

To send an Excel workbook to one recipient, open the workbook you want to send. Choose File, Send To, and select Mail Recipient (as Attachment) or click the Email button on the Standard toolbar. Excel's Office Assistant asks if you want to send the entire workbook as an attachment or send the current sheet as the message body. Choose the option you want. If you choose the workbook attachment option, you should see the Outlook message window, illustrated in Figure 48.10.

Figure 48.10. Send someone an attached spreadsheet.

graphics/48fig10.gif

Set up the Outlook information requested in the message window, and type your email mail message. Notice that Excel automatically attached the workbook to your email message. Click the Send button to send your message with the attached workbook via Outlook.

If you choose to insert the current sheet in the message body, you will see the Outlook message window, shown in Figure 48.11.

Figure 48.11. Send a spreadsheet from within Excel.

graphics/48fig11.gif

Complete the address information at the top of the message window. Notice that Excel automatically inserted the current sheet into the email message box. Click the Send This Sheet button to send your message with the worksheet as the message body via Outlook.

Summary

You've now seen how to integrate Excel with other Office applications. One of the primary reasons to own the Microsoft Office suite is to share data between the programs so you don't have redundant information in several locations. Excel works well with the other programs and is able to transfer information to and from them.

Chapter 49. Introducing Macros

During this chapter, you will learn how to use macros to simplify your work in Excel, making you more efficient and leaving you time for other things you need to do on the job. Macros are not difficult to create and use. They are special instructions that control how Excel functions. This chapter will hone your skills and teach you the Excel-specific advantages and problems you'll encounter with macros.

What Is a Macro?

As you work with Excel, you might discover yourself repeating many actions and commands. For example, every time you create a new worksheet, you might immediately enter a series of titles (such as months) across one row or format a set of numbers using the currency style.

Although you can make some repetitive work more efficient by using the toolbar or templates, you might find it easier to create a macro to repeat a sequence of actions and commands.

You store macros in a macro sheet, a special type of Excel worksheet that is very similar to a regular worksheet. You must have a macro sheet open to be able to use the macros written in that file.

Each macro has three parts :

Macro name
Macro shortcut key
Macro steps

The macro name is a description you use to manage and run the macro. For example, a macro you create to change the font for data on the worksheet can be called Font_change.

The macro shortcut key is an optional key combination you can use to run the macro. For example, you can assign the shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+F to run the Font_change macro.

The macro steps are simply the commands expressed in the Visual Basic language that execute when you run the macro. These steps are a list of instructions that Excel executes in sequence, starting from the first line and moving down to the last line. Note that each instruction in the macro must start with a period ( . ). An equal sign ( = ) follows the instruction. If you omit the period at the beginning of the line or the equal sign following the instruction, Excel ignores that step in the macro.

The first command should be Sub , a special command that tells Excel the macro has begun its operation. The last command should be End Sub , a special command that tells Excel the macro has finished its operation. For example, examine the macro in Figure 49.1. Notice the three parts to the macro.

Figure 49.1. Macro instructions for changing the font.

graphics/49fig01.gif

Macros are useful for automating repetitive or complex tasks . Although a macro is a series of programming instructions, you do not need to know anything about programming to create one. Excel offers a macro-recording feature that translates your actions into macro instructions.