In addition to this very good introduction, here's my approach to automating things in Excel that I know how to do manually in Excel. These steps apply to any (Office) application that has a macro recorder:

  1. Start the Excel Macro Recorder
  2. Perform the desired action(s) manually, for example, delete a row or bolden text or create a pivot chart
  3. Stop the Excel Macro Recorder
  4. Inspect the generated VB code
  5. Check that the generated VB code does what you want
  6. Translate the generated VB code to Perl / Win32::OLE invocations

That's all there is to it and it sure beats poring over the documentation to find out the needed function names.

Similar lists exist at Re^3: Problems with Microsft's new Office 'XML' and Re: Convert word(.doc) file to html file, but as this appears to be a good starting page for people working with Win32::OLE, I figured to put it here as well.

In reply to Use The Macro Recorder, Luke (Re: Using Win32::OLE and Excel - Tips and Tricks) by Corion
in thread Using Win32::OLE and Excel - Tips and Tricks by cacharbe

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