Keeping Macro Scripts Organized

[Markter]

I have been using ME for the about 3-4 months now, and I love it, but my macro scripts are becoming longer and more complex. I do not have a background in programming and am having some trouble keeping my Macro scripts organized. I do use Remarks (although probably not as much as I should). Does anyone have any other suggestions or tricks to help keep long scripts organized?

Thanks!

Mark

[kevin]

I use the 'Macro Categories' to organize my macros by function.

 

When I find that I am repeating some macro steps in more than one macro, I create a separate macro and 'call' it using the Macro Run command. For example, we have a set of macros that we refer to as our Test Suite. These macros are used to test Macro Express. The test suite opens Notepad, writes results to it, prompts the user to review the results, and then closes Notepad. I have a macro to open and close Notepad.

 

I use the nicknames of macros to help keep things organized. For example, I use the prefix 'Function: ' in the name of any macro that is meant to be called by other macros. I currently have 60+ 'function' macros not including the function macros provided by the PGM Functions Library.

 

Another technique that I use is to group specific macros in separate macro files (some members of this forum call these macro libraries). I have a separate macro file that I use when updating the Zip Code and Area Code data in our Zip Express product. You can either manually load different files by clicking File | Open Macro File or you can use the 'Load New Macro File' macro command to create a macro to do it for you.

 

Within each macro I create a 'header' that includes what the macro does, which variables are used and any external files needed. You can see examples of this technique by downloading some of the macros in the shared macros web page or by downloading TweakMe3 or Pop-N-Pass from our More Macro Express Downloads page.