Backup Office Document Files Automatically

No one can deny the fact that files are the most important asset on the computer. You face a variety of files everyday, such as the system files, the picture files, the music files, and other files you wrote as well.

Especially, those Office document files you built, like as Excel document files, which are very important to your work, once the files are deleted or damaged, you have to face a big trouble: you can not deal with anything within a whole day or a week. As a result, you have to rebuild the files. Nobody can give you a little help on this.

In general, you backup the files to ensure the usability of files, that is to copy the files and save them into the CD or floppy disk in different places. When the files are deleted or destroyed, you use the backuped copy to restore the file. Under Windows system, you can use Windows Explorer copying or burning files to backup the files. The operation is easy, but unfortunately, backuping is not one time operation, you have to backup your files overy and overy again once you edit the old files or create a new one. This makes the operation very monotonous and bothersome.

Absolutely, it's not a pleasant process to backup the files manually by using Windows Explore, in particular, there're many files under several folders which need to be backed up. You must be careful to pick those files for copying. In this case, you could use a professional program to help you do this. Here, Macro Expert is a good choice to do that, you even automatically backup your files by using the scheduler in Macro Expert, for example: backing up all Excel document files at 17:30 everyday.

Now, we'll show you how to create a macro for the task in Macro Expert. If you have not a copy of the program, just visit at http://www.macro-expert.com/download.htm.

Step 1: Creating an empty macro

Open "Macro Manager", click the menu "Script', and then choose "Create Blank Macro".



Then the dialog "Properties" pops up for asking some properties to the new macro. Here name the new macro as "Backup Office Document Files", and then click "Ok".



The program will ask you with the message "Do you want to edit the script now?", you choose "Yes" to edit the macro now.

Step 2: Inserting the action into the macro

After opening the Script Editor, click the menu "Insert", and point"Files", then choose "Copy File".



Under the options dialog of the action, the first thing is to specifing the folder of the source file. suppose you want to backup all Office document files under the folder "My Documents". By considering "My Documents" under Windows system as a special folder, you may use a global variable instead of its absolute(full) path in case you don't need to change the backup action when you change the absolute path of "My Documents" in the future. So click the button "Select A Variable" at the right of the field "Source folder", and switch to the tab "Global" in the opened dialog, and then point "mddir - Path of My Documents". Click "OK" to return to the dialog "Copy File".

Here, you'll be noticed that the variable name "%mddir%" has been put into the field "Source folder". The next is to set the type for the backup files, so you put the Office document files' extension name into the field "Files or folder name", such as *.doc;*,xls;*.ppt;.

Then set the destination for the backup files. Suppose you'll backup the office files to the local disk F:, and put the backup files under the folder "My Documents" of the disk, then you type "f:\my documents" into the field "Destination folder", and tick off all the options, then click "OK".


Now you can close the Editor for saving the macro.

Step 3: Assigning a schedule rule to the macro

Now the macro has been built, and the backup files action is added too. The next step you need to do is to set the time for launching the macro (backup files). Go back to "Macro Manager", click the new macro named "Backup Office Document Files" which is placed in the macro list, and then click the button "Properties" on the toolbar.



In the "Properties" dialog, switch to the tab "Scheduler", and then click "Add" to add a schedule rule.



After clicking the button "Add", the schedule window pops up, pick the schedule type "Daily". And then type a start time 03/02/2007 17:30 in the field "The day of next launch", and then choose the option "Every day" in the section "Launch this macro". And then click the button "Ok" to save the rule and back to the dialog "Properties", then click "Ok" to save the changes.

OK, that's that! The new macro will be automatically launched at 17:30 everyday to copy all Office document files under "My Documents" into "f:\my documents" for backup purpose.