- Record: in Excel, the Developer tab's Record Macro button captures the actions that follow; in Google Sheets, Extensions, Macros, Record macro does the same.
- Store: Excel keeps the macro in the current workbook or in a Personal Macro Workbook available to every file on that machine; a Sheets macro lives with its spreadsheet.
- Edit: Excel writes the recording as Visual Basic for Applications, opened in the Visual Basic Editor; Sheets writes it as Apps Script.
- Run: from a menu, a keyboard shortcut or a button on the sheet.
The recorder's one important question comes before recording starts. Google Sheets makes the recorder pick between absolute and relative references first, and that pick decides whether the replay touches the exact cells that were recorded or cells positioned the same way around whatever is selected. That is the same distinction a formula's cell reference makes, applied to actions instead of arithmetic, and getting it wrong is the classic reason a macro that worked yesterday formats the wrong column today. Microsoft's own recorder guidance warns of the sibling problem: a recording tied to a range ignores rows added below it later.
Security and the move to the cloud
Because a VBA macro can do anything the user can, it became a favourite way to deliver malware in email attachments. Microsoft changed Office so that macros in files carrying the internet's mark are blocked by default, and the unblock routes, such as a trusted location, are deliberately a few steps away. Inside an organisation, a macro-enabled workbook is still the quickest automation for one person's desktop task. Anything that crosses applications, runs on a schedule or needs to keep running when a laptop is shut belongs in a cloud flow built from connectors instead. The advanced Excel topic places macros and VBA beside Power Query; the workplace automation topic picks up the work that outgrows one workbook.