Author: Neil

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Writing a simple office macro

The Commtap symboliser and Eye Gaze Communication Book Maker programmes use code (VBA – Visual Basic for Applications) which has been added to Microsoft Office. Virtually anyone with a Microsoft Office product can create VBA code. Here’s how.

  1. Close any open PowerPoint documents.
  2. Create a new PowerPoint document.
  3. Enable the “Developer” tab:
    • Right click on a blank space on the ribbon and choose “Customize the Ribbon…”.
    • In the list of Main Tabs on the right, scroll down to “Developer” and click on the box next to it to get a tick in it.
    • Click on “OK” at the bottom.
  4. Create some code:
    • Click on the “Developer” tab.
    • Click on “Visual Basic”.
    • In the menu on the left, right click on “VBAProject (Presentation1)” and go to Insert -> Module.
    • On the left, you will see “Module1” has appeared – double click on it.
    • In the white area on the right, type the following – exactly as it appears here:
Option Explicit
Sub MyCode()
  MsgBox "Hello everybody!"
End Sub
  1. Click on “MyCode”, then press “F5” or “fn” and “F5” together on your keyboard.

You should get a message box popping up saying “Hello everybody!”. Click on “OK” on the box to get rid of it.

Of course, this is just a very quick introduction to VBA. There are loads of sites and books which you can use to learn more.

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Downloading and using a symbol set to use with the Commtap Symboliser in PowerPoint

If you are using the Commtap Symboliser for PowerPoint, to get the full benefit you will need to add at least one symbol set.

As an example, I will show you how to download and use the large and free Arasaac symbol set.

Follow on in the video above, or follow the steps below:

  1. In the Commtap Symboliser group, click on “Preferences”.
  2. In the box, click on “Get more symbols”. This takes you to the “Symbol Sets” page on the Commtap Symboliser website.
  3. Scroll down to “Arasaac Symbols” and  click on the link to get it from the Commtap resources website. You can also download it from Arasaac – but this version includes more words. The symbol set can be used for non-commercial purposes.
  4. Scroll down and click on download.
  5. Choose to save the file. This may take a few minutes.
  6. Find the file you downloaded. Right click on it and choose “Extract all…” and then “Extract”. This will take a minute or two.
  7. Move the new folder called “Arasaac colour” (not the zip file) to somewhere safe on your computer.
  8. Go back to PowerPoint. In the Symboliser preferences box, click on “Create Word List from Folder”.
  9. Browse to the folder you just copied. Click on OK, and then on OK again: this tells PowerPoint where to find all the picture symbols in the set you just downloaded.
  10. Enable the new symbol list by clicking in the box next to its name. Close the preferences box.
  11. You can now symbolise words using the new symbol set.