16 min read

Attaching Macros to Buttons and Events

A macro does nothing on its own until something triggers it — a button click, or a form's On Load event, wired through a control's Property Sheet.

Field Notes: Wiring a Macro to an Event

$Trigger a saved macro from a button click or another event.$

$Nearly every control, and every form or report itself, has event properties that can run a macro automatically.$

Do this

Select a button, or another control, or the form itself, and open its Property Sheet (F4).

Verification

You are correct if all of these are true:

$Whenever that event occurs — the button being clicked, for example — Access automatically runs every action in the attached macro, in order, with zero further effort on the user's part.$

Rather than creating a separate, named, reusable macro object, you can also click directly into an event property, like On Click, and choose "[Embedded Macro]" to build a one-off sequence of actions that lives entirely within that single control — useful for simple, single-purpose actions you'll never need to reuse elsewhere.