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All user
levels
- WordPerfect Universe - http://www.wpuniverse.com/.
See the Macros & Merges forum (where you can ask both
basic and advanced questions), and Code Snippets (for
some more advanced code samples). WPU is a good place to "lurk
and learn." You can see more threads by choosing a selection
in the field "Showing threads...".
Novice
level
Intermediate
to Advanced level
- First, be sure to add a Macros
Help selection to your WordPerfect Help menu (if it is not
already there).
- For example, in WP9+, right-click
the top menu or toolbar, then click Settings..., then the Menus
tab in the Customize Settings window. Select the appropriate
menu (such as <WordPerfect 9 Menu>), then click on Edit.
In the next window, in the Menu Editor's Features tab, select
Help in the "Feature categories" list. Next, select
Macros... in the features window, then click Add Menu Item. Optional:
With the Menu Editor window still open, put the cursor over the
new menu item, hold down the left-mouse key and drag it leftward
and then downward into the Help menu.
- You can learn many basic WP
macro techniques and error-trapping methods by examining the
macros others have written.
- My
own macros are heavily
annotated to explain what is happening at almost every step of
the macro's execution. You'll find menus, search and replace
functions, loop techniques, and many other "snippets"
of code you can use in your own work.
- You'll also find that I generally
don't use the more complicated routines if I can avoid them (e.g.,
callbacks or complex arrays), unless they are self-contained
in a snippet that could be pasted into other macros (such as
my "Please Wait ..." messages). I'm not a programmer
by trade, so I look for simple ways of doing something without
using macro commands I don't fully understand or that don't work
they way they are supposed to work.
- Doug Loudenback's "A Common
Person's Macro Manual" - an excellent (and free) reference
for macro writers.
- http://gmccomb.com/ - Gordon McComb, author and macro programmer.
On this site you'll find his WordPerfect Support CD-ROM,
WordPerfect for Windows Macros, 201 PowerMacros (WP7/WP8)
and other help for the beginner to advanced user. See also Gordon's
printed macro tutorial at http://gmccomb.com/tutor/.
- The WordPerfect
8 Macros Manual in HTML.
- Julie Jeppson's Perfect
Script Journal contained monthly articles of particular usefulness
to those who want to learn to write macros. The Journal hasn't
been updated for several years, but it still contains useful
articles. For example:
- For a little help creating menus
and other dialogs with the Dialog Editor (WP7 and later), see
Julie's "Creating Macro
Dialog Code from Dialog Editor Dialogs."
- Normally, after creating a dialog
with the Dialog Editor you need to put some code into the body
of your macro to display the dialog, something like this:
- DialogShow("menu";
"WordPerfect") // Here, "menu" (case-sensitive)
is the name of the dialog
vAns:=MacroDialogResult // Store the result of the user entry
(OK, Cancel, etc.)
If(vAns=2) Quit Endif // If "Cancel", exit
- Note that if you create a dialog
in the Dialog Editor and then copy and paste the dialog
into the body of your macro's code (as explained in her article's
paragraph 6), you should also:
- (1) revise the DialogShow()
command to something like DialogShow("menu"; "WordPerfect";;"OKBttn")
-- where the first parameter is the name of the dialog and the
last parameter is the default button; and
- (2) add a DialogDestroy command
at the end of the Dialog code section, like this: DialogDestroy("menu");
and
- (3) remember to rename the dialog
in the Dialog Editor (e.g., "menuBAK"), since you can't
have the same dialog name in the Editor and in the body of the
macro's code.
- Note that in paragragraph 9
of her article ("Just before your DialogShow command...")
she cautions you to exit the macro after saving. This is an easy
step to forget, and if you do forget, the new dialog won't be
placed in the Dialog Editor.
- For her Macro and Merge workbooks,
see http://home.comcast.net/~jj84097/wpmacros/books.htm.
Of particular note are her lists of RightCodes at http://wpmacros.com/rightcodenumeric.htm
or http://wpmacros.com/rightcodecode.htm.
- if you need a list of all macro
commands, here's a tip on how to get a listing from Gerald Kumpf
(posted on a Corel newsgroup, 10/23/02):
- '. . .to get a list of commands:
- 1. Start PerfectScript as a
stand alone [e.g., if you use WP9, look for PS90.exe and run
it]
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Enter simultaneously to activate Advanced
features of PerfectScript
3. Click Help | Macro Command Browser
4. Choose WordPerfect-EN as Command Type
5. Click Brief Dump (for a list of Macro commands) or Full Dump
(for a list of commands plus details)
- An even better alternative to
a list of commands is to put the Macro Help button on your main
tool bar [or the main menu; see the first paragraph in this section
above] and use the "Find" function to search for key
words. In this case "Cell" brings up all commands with
the word "Cell" in them and "Pos" brings
up all the "PosCell..." commands. It also brings up
a list where you can find examples of some commands in actual
use in sample macros. . . .'
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Novice
level
Intermediate
to Advanced level
- To automate templates
with prompts, etc., see "Automating WordPerfect Templates"
on the Tips page at http://wptoolbox.com/tips.html#AutoWPT
- Many WordPerfect 10 templates
and Projects (both are English versions) can be downloaded from
Corel's
FTP site and serve as models for your own templates. They
can be downloaded individually or as a batch using the ZIP file
at the bottom of the site's page.
- You may be able to use these
templates in later versions of WordPerfect. For example, one
WP12 user asked Charles Rossiter (Corel C_Tech) how to do this
with the WP10 calendar project. [Be sure to substitute your current
version number (e.g., 11, 13, etc.) where you see "12"
in the items below.] Here's
Charles's reply on 8/25/04:
"You can use [these Projects]
in WPWin12. Two steps are needed.
1. The WPWin10 projects require
two additional files to be created in the WPWin12 template folder:
uawp10en.dll and uawp10en.ast. These files MUST be copies of
uawp12en.dll and uawp12en.ast -- NOT the versions from the WPWin10
template folder.
2. Copy the WPWin10 template
files (*.wpt and *.ast) to the WPWin12
template folder. Then search for file Projects.Usr for WPWin12,
and delete it.
Now when you next launch WPWin12
and do File, New from Project, the catalogue file Projects.Usr
will be re-created and you will have access to the WPWin10 templates
and Perfect Experts."
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Barry MacDonnell's