Clicking the Define and record... item in the "Record" sub-menu in the Advanced tab will immediately open the "Macro definition" dialog, and after changes here are confirmed by pressing OK, begin recording keystrokes and editor actions for later modification and macro playback.
While recording is active, a Macro notification along with a red "recording" icon will be shown in the second cell (towards the middle) of the status bar.
The following functionality will be recorded when recording a macro:
- Keyboard based text editing - typing text, deleting text, etc.
- Selecting text with keyboard commands
- Caret positioning
All keystrokes are recorded, including key combinations that move the caret to end of line, top or bottom of document, etc. Mouse motion and scrolling are not recorded. All positioning should be done with the keyboard. Take care to ensure that when the macro is to be played again the same keystrokes are appropriate.
- Base64 encode / decode (Advanced tab)
- Active line functions (Edit tab)
- Bookmarks
- Brace matching
- Case reformatting (Format tab)
- Cut, copy, paste
Any of these operations will be performed dynamically as the macro is played again. If an item is cut while recording the macro, an item will be cut while playing back the macro based on the selected text at the time the macro is being played back. While playing back the macro, if the selected text is different from when the macro was recorded, the text cut while playing back the macro will also be different.
- Clipboard changing
- Column mode editing
- Comments add / remove (Coding tab)
- Convert wrap to line ends / Convert line ends to wrap
- Line terminator conversions
- File encoding conversions
- Date / time insertion (Edit tab)
- File encryption and decryption
- File open, close, new, save
- Find, Replace, Find in files, Replace in files
(See their help topics for special characters that are especially useful with macros.
- Hex editing
- Hide / show lines
- Insert and overstrike mode
- Playing macros
Allows nesting macros
- Sort
- Spaces to tabs and tabs to spaces conversions
- Template insertion
- Trim leading / trailing spaces (Format tab)
- Window switching (via the "Last file" and "Next file" commands in the Window tab)
- XML reformat (Coding tab)