Microsoft Excel is the go-to tool for working with data. There are probably a handful of people who haven’t used Excel, given its immense popularity. Excel is a widely used software application in industries today, built to generate reports and business insights. Excel supports several in-built applications that make it easier to use.

To automate a repetitive task, you can record a macro with the Macro Recorder in Microsoft Excel. Imagine you have dates in random formats and you want to apply a single format to all of them. A macro can do that for you. You can record a macro applying the format you want, and then replay the macro whenever needed.

When you record a macro, the macro recorder records all the steps in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code. These steps can include typing text or numbers, clicking cells or commands on the ribbon or on menus, formatting cells, rows, or columns, or even importing data from an external source, say, Microsoft Access. Visual Basic Application (VBA) is a subset of the powerful Visual Basic programming language, and is included with most Office applications. Although VBA gives you the ability to automate processes within and between Office applications, it is not necessary to know VBA code or computer programming if the Macro Recorder does what you want.

It is important to know that you when you record a macro, the Macro Recorder captures almost every move you make. So if you make a mistake in your sequence, for example, clicking a button that you did not intend to click, the Macro Recorder will record it. The resolution is to re-record the entire sequence, or modify the VBA code itself. This is why whenever you record something, it's best to record a process with which you're highly familiar. The more smoothly you record a sequence, the more efficiently the macro will run when you play it back.