04 November 2005

Weekly Gotcha: Macro Pauses

When building a macro, you can pause to allow for user input with the Insert Pause button. The problem is that the user has to know to go to Tools->Macro->Continue after they input their information. This extremely non-intuitive.

A better option is to build multiple macros. Let each macro stop before required input and a new macro be set to start after input. Then add all the macros to the shortcut bar with a number in from of them like a series of steps (you can use folders to isolate various processes. This way a user would see something like:

1) Click here to Start bank transfer
2) Enter Amount
3) Click here to post transfer

Steps 1 and 3 would be macros, step 2 would be a dummy shortcut. The user would click step 1 to populate all the bank account info. They would enter the amount as step 2 and the step 3 macros would post and finish processing.

This makes changes to the process easy since you don't have to re-record a giant macro and it funcitons as a poor man's workflow.