Recording macros on a Mac?

I’m a non-Mac user, but support the office technology-wise (basically this :)). The Mac just upgraded to Word 2008, which seems to have been a much more pleasant experience than moving to 2007 on the PC (I’m jealous at the lack of ribbon). Except for one thing: no more macro support—it’s all Applescript.

Two questions.

First, there were a few heavily used (recorded) macros in the old version. Are they lost forever? Any way of converting/resurrecting them? Any way of assigning them to the keyboard?

Second, none of us have the time or patience to learn much about Applescript at the moment. I’ve taken a look at it and realize that it’s simple, but it’s nowhere near as simple as hitting ‘record’ doing your thing, then ‘stop’ and you’re all done. You know, recording a macro rather than writing one. But before I start muttering under my breath about Macs and Microsoft (he was such a quiet man!), I’d better be sure it’s not an OS feature sitting right there. Is it?

Thanks,

Rhythm

Try going to Applications -> Applescript -> Script Editor.

Then hit record, do your thing, then stop.

Thanks. Looks like the right path, but I’m stumbling around blind on it. Glad there’re no cactus.

I opened the script recording window, hit record, went to Word, Edit>Paste Special>Unformatted Text (had something on the clipboard), then went back to script editor and hit Stop. Nothing appeared. I tested it by recording a couple steps on a finder window (i.e., when I was done the Tell Application … lines appeared), but not sure what to do to get it to play with Word.

If I may ask, once a macro is recorded, how do I assign the keyboard command? Can I make it Word-only?

As a super bonus, do you know if there’s a way to get Applescript to repeat last command (as in Control-Y in Word)? Quark doesn’t have that ability natively, and it’s oft-used in other programmes.

Thanks for the direction!

Ah ha.
per Automating Word with AppleScript on Macworld.com:

That’s rude. Sounds like learning AppleScript (or getting better at searching) is the only way to get Word to jump through hoops as it once did. At least the article I found has the past unformatted we were looking for.

That does suck indeed.