Chapter 14 - Using Macros

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Microsoft Access macros offer you a user-friendly way to automate database actions, with a simple Macro Designer interface that lets you select macro actions from a drop-down list. Although macros don’t have all the power or functionality of VBA code (see Chapter 20, "Customizing Your Database with VBA Code," for information about writing code), they’re easy to use, and you can get started with database automation using macros if you’re not yet ready to learn VBA programming. In addition, macros have some special uses of their own, such as creating custom hot keys or running functions when a database is started—something you can’t set in the Startup dialog box.

This chapter shows you how to write simple macros to automate database tasks and gives examples of some special-purpose macros. We won’t go into writing complex macros in any detail, because VBA code is more suitable for complex database automation, where you need error handling or logical structures to deal with a variety of conditions. (Macros can handle only very simple conditions, and they don’t support error handling.)