Assigning a Macro to a Button in Your Text

You may already know that you can only assign a macro to a button (a tool) on the Quick Access Toolbar. Word also allows you to add buttons within the text of you document. These buttons have a macro or a Word command assigned to them, and you can control what happens when the button is selected in text. This is all instituted through the use of a field code.

It may be a bit of a misnomer to refer to the result of this field code as a "button," because no graphics are involved whatsoever, although you can create your own graphic and embed it into the field. The syntax for the field code is:

MacroButton MacroName Display

MacroName is the name of the macro or command you want to run, and Display is the text you want displayed by the field code. If you use a graphic instead of text, then the graphic is displayed. When a user double-clicks on the displayed text or graphic, then the macro or command defined by MacroName is executed.

To assign a command or macro to a button, and insert that button in your text, follow these steps:

1. Figure out the name of the macro or Word command you want to use with the button. To find the correct macro or command names you can right click on a blank area of the ribbon then click on Customize (Word 2007) or Customize Quick Access Toolbar (Word 2010 and later). You can find the names in the dialog box.
2. Position the insertion point where you want the button to appear.
3. Press Ctrl+F9 to insert a pair of field brackets.
4. Between the field brackets, type the fieldname MacroButton followed by a space.
5. Type the name of the command or macro you want the button to execute, followed by a space. (This is the name you determined in step 1.)
6. Type the button name text you want displayed, or insert a graphic to be used as a button.
7. Press F9 to update the field display.

The MacroButton field has been around since the earliest days of Word, but in the latest versions of the program, it no longer seems to want to work with a graphic (step 6). If you can get it to work properly with a graphic, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8658) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Assigning a Macro to a Button in Your Text.