Publish and share well-behaved macros

[cjakeman]

I work in a college with several hundred teaching staff all beavering
away with MS Office to develop handouts, presentations, worksheets etc.
I have a number of macros for Excel, Word and Powerpoint which are
useful for teaching and I would like to share those with my colleagues.
Maybe we could assemble a collection of macros useful in teaching.

What advice would you give on publishing macros? If I distribute as
source, that requires some expertise from the user. If I publish as an
Add-In, then that might conflict with some other Add-In. If I take over
a keyboard combination or add a menu, then that may conflict with
someone else's scheme.

So how do I deliver something which requires little expertise but is
also well-behaved?

Thanks, Chris

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

What advice would you give on publishing macros? If I distribute as
source, that requires some expertise from the user. If I publish as an
Add-In, then that might conflict with some other Add-In. If I take over
a keyboard combination or add a menu, then that may conflict with
someone else's scheme.

As far as PowerPoint goes, there are really only two practical methods of
distributing macros: as COM add-ins or as standard PPA add-ins.

There's info about the latter starting here:

Creating and Installing Add-ins, Toolbars, Buttons
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/index.html#Creating_and_Installing_Add-ins,_Too
lbars,_Buttons_

What sort of add-in conflicts are you concerned about? Though they do happen,
they're fairly rare in PPT.

But at least you don't have to worry about one thing: PowerPoint doesn't allow
you to reassign keyboard combinations so no chance of grabbing the wrong one.