How to Create a Toolbar Button for an Existing Macro

April 24th, 2007

You have been given a special project that requires you to travel and conduct massive training workshops for new employees that have been hired by your company, Happy Tummies – a restaurant chain. You will need to train a co-worker to fulfill your job duties for about a month. You only have two days to train her. One of your main responsibilities is creating various monthly training reports, and you have created macros that quickly and automatically run monotonous steps associated with the reports. You decide to create toolbar buttons for the most commonly used macros in order to train your co-worker faster and make it easier for her to prepare the training reports using the macros in your absence.

In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to add a toolbar button for a macro instead of using the keyboard shortcut or going through the steps to run an existing macro. We’ll create the toolbar button for an existing macro, which runs the names of all the existing training managers.

Let’s Get Started!

1. Go to Start>Programs>Microsoft Excel to open the application. Go to File>New and open a new spreadsheet.

macro button image

2. Go to Tools>Customize and select it.

macro button image

3. A pop-up menu window called “Customize” will appear, click on the “Toolbar” tab and select the toolbar where you want the macro button to appear. For this tutorial, we want the macro button to be accessible and visible in the “Standard” toolbar, so check the box for the Standard toolbar.

macro button image

4. Now click on the “Commands” tab and select a category – the kind of function you will be creating as a button. Go down and select “macros.” The Commands window to the right of the pop-up window appears with two options: Custom Menu Item or a Custom Button.

macro button image

5. Click on the “Custom Button” (it looks like a happy face) option and drag it to the standard toolbar (located at the top of the screen under the different menu options - File, Edit, etc.), place it right next to the “Save” button so it is easy to locate.

macro button image

6. Now click on the new macro button and a pop-up window called “Assign Macro” will appear. Here select the actual macro that will be assigned to this button, so for this tutorial we’ll use one already created called “PERSONAL.XLS!.ht” macro and hit OK.

macro button image

macro button image

7. Finally, we’ll test the new custom macro button. Go to File>New to open a new spreadsheet, and click on the newly created macro button located on the standard toolbar to the right of the “Save” button. After clicking the button, you will see the names of ten training managers automatically appear.

macro button image

macro button image

Great! wasn’t it super easy. You can basically follow the same steps to add a button for any function other than a macro. Remember to keep practicing because the more you do it, the better you will get.

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6 Comments

  1. Comment by Ganesh on May 30, 2007 1:38 pm

    Good

  2. Comment by Divya Mohan on August 20, 2008 10:28 am

    Very helpful

  3. Comment by Osman on August 21, 2008 4:13 am

    How can I remove the tool bar button (if desired)?

  4. Comment by Ankur on September 3, 2008 1:07 pm

    I got how to approach the macro but i didn’t get to know how to create “PERSONAL” macro as that is not given in tutorial..
    so this let me in doubt.
    Ankur

  5. Comment by Magalactica on October 2, 2008 2:10 pm

    I Ankur, the personal spreadsheet that here are talking about is that you need to create a macro first. That’s why it comes in the list when you need it.

    Good day.

  6. Comment by Murthy on November 4, 2008 4:08 pm

    Very Good

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