Macro Express at Yale Home Page   June 2005

Importing Macros

Recently, a large set of macros was created for entering diacritics on RLIN for the use of NACO catalogers and distributed as an attachment. For somone who has to input on RLIN and Voyager, switching back and forth between files is a major annoyance, so the goal should be to import the new macros into the main Macro Express file with as little disruption as possible. We'll use this as a case study for importing macros from an e-mail attachment.

Important: macros can be attached in e-mail only as files; even if a single macro is sent, it must be first exported into a file. We'll cover exporting in a future tip.

1. Having received the file rlin21diacritics2.mex, find it in the Eudora Attach folder and move it to the Macro Express folder. It's not a good idea to leave Macro Express files in the Attach folder. You'll find that it's much easier if you do all of your imports from the Macro Express folder. So now rlin21diacritics.mex is in the MacEx folder. What next?

2. (The assumption is your current file is master1.2D.mex, the MacEx file that contains both the Voyager diacritics macros and the Voyager functionality macros.) Open the Macro Explorer window. Decide whether you want to import into a preexisting folder or create a separate folder. In this case, we're talking about ca. 50 macros with functionality specific to a single software program (RLIN21), so it makes sense to create a separate folder.

2a. Find the Categories subwindow in Macro Explorer and right click on All Categories (Master 1.2D.mex) to open the pull-down menu. (Left) Click on New Category.

2b. A new folder icon will appear at the bottom of the tree with the default name New Category. Type in a name, e.g. RLIN21.

2c. Select (click on) the folder <RLIN21>. The Macros subwindow on the right should be empty.

3. With the target category (RLIN21) selected, click on the Import Macros icon on the toolbar.

4. The Import Macros window will open.

5. Click on the Open File tab. The Import Macro File window will open. Make sure "Look in" is aimed at Macro Express 3 (since that is where you moved the rlin21diacritics2.mex file).

6. Double-click on rlin21.diacritics2.mex (or select & click the OPEN tab). The Import Macros window will now list all macros in the file rlin21diacritics2.mex.

7. Click the Select All tab. All the macros listed will be highlighted and the Import tab will be enabled. (If you only wanted to import selected macros, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the nickname of each macro wanted, but in this case all the macros would need to be imported.)

8. Click on the Import tab. All macros will be copied into the RLIN21 folder. Then click Exit.

Note: Sometimes when importing, you may get a message that one of the macros wasusing an activation key already claimed by a macro in your current file. Click Yes.

In that case, the newly imported macro will be imported as Inactivated. (It will not overlay the macro using that key activation.) You will need to either reassign the key activation on your current macro and then reactivate the import macro to its default activation key, or assign a new, non-conflicting activation key to the imported macro.

Note that this will generally not happen with the RLIN21 macros, since these macros are set up to function only if prescribed RLIN21 windows (RLIN21.exe and RLIN21.editor) are on top, & this property was not assigned to any of the macros in the original master1.2D.mex file. However, this will be quite common when Voyager macros are imported from other files.