[Editor’s note: This week’s article is the third in our series on macros, and I’m honored to have written it with Dan A. Wilson, proprietor of The Editor’s DeskTop (http://www.editorsdesktop.com/). The example in the article is intentionally contrived. It’s a nightmare task of repetitive processes. And it’s long. But it’s designed to teach you some things about recording macros. Dan and I hope you find it enlightening.]
Today’s article is the second in our series about recording macros. It covers basically the same procedure as last week’s newsletter, but with an emphasis on finding and replacing problem items in an electronic manuscript. Watch for a complex (and useful) example of recording a macro in next week’s article, coauthored with Dan A. Wilson, proprietor of The Editor’s DeskTop (http://www.editorsdesktop.com/).
Over the next few weeks Editorium Update will explain how to record macros and use them to simplify repetitive editorial tasks in Microsoft Word. I’d like to thank subscribers Meg Cox, Allene Goforth, and Dan A. Wilson for suggesting this topic. I’m especially grateful to Dan, who is an editor’s editor and Microsoft Word expert, for writing one of the articles with me. (Dan is the proprietor of The Editor’s DeskTop, http://www.editorsdesktop.com/.) At Dan’s suggestion, I’ll start with the basics, get a little fancier next week, and then show you Dan’s backbreaker of an example two weeks from now, so stay tuned. If you’re a member of the Freelance email list who signed up for this series of articles, welcome! I hope you’ll find the newsletter valuable enough to stay with us. If you’ve been reading the past newsletters on searching with wildcards, you’ll want to look at our Readers Write column after the feature article for some additional information.