Hour 21. Creating Macros

Creating macros in Word or Excel is as simple as turning on the Macro Recorder and recording your keystrokes and mouse movements. Although it creates messy code with many unnecessary commands, it works quite well and serves its purpose.

Outlook doesn't have a Macro Recorder, so you need to learn how to program and write your own code. Fortunately, there are plenty of Web sites and forums that provide tutorials and code snippets to get you started.

In this hour, I'll introduce you to the basics of creating macros and create a couple of simple macros in Outlook.

Using the VB Editor
Introducing the Outlook Object Model
Creating macros with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

Even if you don't consider yourself a programmer, you should try the sample macros included in this hour. In the end, you'll have two useful, time-saving macros. And even if you never write a line of code on your own, the macros you create here will be useful in your day-to-day work.