In the late 80s I had some interest in computer and took one course at a time to complete a computer applications occupational certificate at a local community college. Part of the program included a course in flow charting and two classes in programming. The spreadsheet class (remember Lotus Notes?) included macros. I liked the logic and structure of programming in the little things we did in class.
Fast forward to about 2005 when I worked in an accounting department. One of the team leaders in the department knew that I had a small knowledge of macros and gave me various macro writing projects over the course of next 3 years. There were others available to go to with questions and a previous employee had made a rather extensive spreadsheet of common macro commands. When I didn't know how to do something I could search on-line to find the commands and steps needed. I often went to the same websites for help.
In 2011 I went to another job where I reported to the manager from my previous company. She gave me several more macro projects in the year we worked together there.
Now I'm not in an accounting department, but at a recent department lunch a co-worker was telling about copying and pasting 8 numbers from one spreadsheet to another and had to do each number individually for what was going to be up to 100 people or so. Another person thought I could do something for her so I started in on another macro project.
I am not fast with my programming and people who really know macro programming would probably look at what I do and think "What is she doing?????" However, it works.
Today I gave my co-worker the finished product. What would have taken her well over an hour now completes in about 15 seconds. The macro copies all the numbers and then color codes them red, yellow, or green for unacceptable, ok, and excellent. She said she never would have dreamed of the color coding so that far exceeded what she wanted.
It is fun to help others be more efficient. It is also interesting to see how what I did 25 years ago and people who influenced me during that time helped make me successful now.
4 comments:
I'm impressed!!
I've never programmed macros, but used them in the days of writing at BJU Press, and they are great!!
Congratulations! There is great satisfaction in knowing that another person has benefited from your knowledge and expertise!
I have no idea what macros is. LOL
A macro is a programmed list of instructions to automate a process.
Example: In a previous job we downloaded a bank report every day. The download resulted in a lot of empty rows. I wrote a macro to automatically delete all those rows, put parentheses around credit amounts, delete other unnecessary info, etc. With the push of a button within seconds the report was formatted in a very useful way.
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