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Macro Express and Libraries

I’m a big fan of library automation technologies and I thought I would write up a short piece on one of my favorite tools – Macro Express – to share with the library world.

What is Macro Express

Macro Express describes itself as:

the premier Windows macro utility. With Macro Express, you can record, edit and play back mouse and keyboard macros. Its powerful tools and robust features will make you more productive.

Although it’s not glamorous, I think this description is pretty accurate. Macro Express works across the Windows OS to automate tedious tasks. My general outlooks is this: if it’s easy to do once but really hard to do 300 times, you should try creating a Macro to automate this work.

Setting up Macro Express

  1. Download from http://www.macros.com/. They provide a 30 day trial and the license fees are quite cheap. Totally recommend purchasing this for your library.
  2. It comes pre-loaded with a few macros but you’ll certainly want to create your own. One important distinction, a “macro” is stored in a “macro file.” So if you are creating a new macro, select “New Macro” and not “New Macro File.”
    macrosnip1
  3. Macro Express should then prompt you “Choose Default Activation.” Macros can be triggered in a number of different ways. The ones I use most often are:
    1. HotKey – This creates a “normal” action that mimics other keyboard shortcuts. Just like CTRL C and CTRL V trigger certain actions, you can program keyboard combinations to execute certain commands.
    2. ShortKey – This activation method uses a special identifier and allows you to execute a macro using a “short key.” I believe the system default is ##. For example, when I type “##ip” Macroexpress replaces that text with the EZ Proxy URL prefix. It’s awesome.
    3. No Activation – this is pretty obvious; this means that macros can only be run from the MacroExpress editor
  4. After selecting an activation option (I will survey all three approaches) click on “Scripting Editor” and you are ready to create a new macro!

Basic Macros

Let’s make a macro that adds your signature to things that we can activate with a ShortKey.

  1. Create a new macro.
  2. Set default activation as a shortkey. I’ll use my initials “ajm” as my shortkey.
  3. Click on scripting editor. This should bring you to the following screen:
    macrosnip2
  4.  This is the “Scripting Editor” window. All of the available commands are on the left side (under “Commands”) and the actual macro you are writing is on the right/main side of the screen (under “Macro Script”)
  5. To get started, you’ll need to add a command. Either find a command by expanding the categories or by searching for a command (bottom left corner). We are looking for the “text type” command which is under “Text.”
  6. Double click the command to add it to the macro or click the small arrows to add it to the macro.
  7. You will get a box that allows you to enter keystrokes. Type out your signature (or copy/paste it in the box.
  8. Click okay and look over your macro.
  9. To give your macro a name (which I recommend!) click on the properties tab from the top band and add a nickname. Then click “Save” in the upper left corner.
  10. Congratulations! You just created a new macro!

I’ll try and write other posts that detail the other activation methods and how they might be useful in a library context. More later!