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Remember that Open Office, including ooBase, is free! But don't let that fool you. And it's not new. Big organizations, government and civilian, are adopting it as their standard office suite... and saving million$, and still Getting The Job Done.
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You can do a great deal of useful work in Open Office without ever getting involved with macros. But if you master macro programming, you can do even more.
The page you are reading addresses just one tiny detail in regard to macros: Where they are stored. It also delves into questions about where ooBase macros are stored in the different versions of ooBase. (A significant change in the storage of macros took place between ooBase version 2 and ooBase version 3.0, and a further important change occurred between version 3.0 1nd 3.1 If you want to work with macros and ooBase, it would pay you to upgrade to Open Office 3.1... but there are ways to postpone the upgrade. Whether it matters to your macro use can be understood from material near the end of this essay.)
An Open Office macro can reside in at least two places, and each has its pros and cons.
A macro can exist in a central repository on your machine. In this case, the macro will be available to any document you work on via Open Office, which might seem like a Good Idea.... but it will also mean that if you have some error in the macro, that macro will be present across the board. But of course if you fix it, you will only have to fix it once. But what if the "fix" (in one context) messes up something that worked "okay" in another?
In the light of what I hope you will infer from the previous paragraph, I prefer to store the macros a document needs in that document. The downside of this approach is that if I ever devise a macro that has broad usefulness, I will have to copy to each document I want to use it. I will have to forward updates when and as they arise. of course there is also an upside: If I move a document to a different computer, it brings with it any macros it needs... which doesn't happen if your macros are in your central Open Office repository.
Which approach is best for you will be influenced by your computing circumstances.
If, from any Open Office application menu you access Tools | Macros | Organize Macros, you will see several choices....
(The selection on your machine might be slightly different, but I would expect at least OpenOffice.org Basic to be present.
If you select any of the options, you get the same dialog, but what you see when you make use of that dialog will be filtered based on which macros you set out to "organize". We're going to be working with the OpenOffice.org Basic macros, but I believe that anyone working with different macro sets would have similar experiences to those I will be describing.
On a computer where not much has happened in respect of macros since a pre version 3.1 OpenOffice was installed, and on which only an ooBase Open Office database is currently open, you will see in the "Macro From" pane only "My Macros" and "OpenOffice.org Macros". In front of each there will be a small square containing a "+" or a "-", indicating, as usual, the existence of a hierarchical structure, like the structure of files in the folders on your backing store. If you are using a post version 3.0 version of Open Office, you will also see a line for the open database.
The two top level "containers" ("MyMacros" and "OpenOffice.org Macros") are, I believe, properly referred to as "Libraries".
The first ("My Macros") is the top level container for macros created which are available to all Open Office documents running on the computer you are currently using. You can add modules to it. Note that you do not need to create a new module for each macro you wish to create... a single module can contain multiple macros.
The second macro library, "OpenOffice.org Macros" is "read only"... you can use what's there, but not (directly) change it. (Although I suspect that at least the OO update process (which you may invoke), or add-ins (which you may install) may change what is present in this library.
Following those two, what you see will depend upon whether your Open Office is newer than version 3.0
For 3.0 and 3.1 installations, if you have an ooWriter document open, as yet unsaved, then in the dialog showing the libraries, you will have an additional entry, one titled "Untitled". Yes... that's your ooWriter document. Any macros you create within that container will be held within the ooWriter document. The system is quite clever about keeping all the names straight. For instance, if you create a macro before you have saved the document, and subsequently save it, the "Untitled" entry in the list of available libraries will have changed to fit the name you gave the document. Whew.
For an Open Office 3.1 installation, if you have a database open, then, as I said, there will be a line for that too. If you have a post 3.0 installation, then you don't need to fool around with having the ooWriter document. It was only there for people with pre-3.1 installations, to provide a place to put macros. Before 3.1, you couldn't store them in file holding all the other parts of your database.
I would like to save my macros with the document which uses them. And by "document", I mean the database when I am working in ooBase. (... the worksheet when I'm working in ooCalc, etc.)
Before version 3 of ooBase, there was a way save macros with the form they applied to. Nice... but not a perfect answer. In ooBase version 3.0.0, the old "save it with the form" option has been cleared away. The "save it with the database" option appeared, hurrah, with Open Office 3.1.
Fear not! For those who are not ready to upgrade to 3.1, there is an answer! Here's the work-around.....
Create an ooWriter document, and store it in the same folder as your database. Make certain to have that document open at any time you are working with the database. You can create and store macros in the ooWriter document. As long as it is open, those macros will be available to any ooBase database which is open at the same time. A little "messy", but not the end of the world.
Do upgrade to Open Office 3.1 when you can. There are always risks, and I probably hate "upgrades" more than most people, but I haven't (yet) had a bad experience through doing an Open Office upgrade. Each time I've done it, the system has even done a good job of automatically clearing away the old version. But do take the usual precautions.
I hope the above was useful and will incline you to return to the main page of my Open Office tutorials, and access other tutorials... or even visit my freeware and shareware "store"!! And bring it to the attention of parents and schools, in particular.
I dislike 'fancy' websites with more concern for a flashy appearance than for good content. For a pretty picture, I can go to an art gallery. Of course, an attractive site WITH content deserves praise... as long as that pretty face doesn't cost download time. In any case....
I am trying to present this material in a format which makes it easy for you to USE it. There are two aspects to that: The way it is split up, and the way it is posted. See the main index to this material for more information about the way it is split up, and the way it is posted.
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