How many people use Office? How many use macros?

[jd_thorne]

I'm doing research on Microsoft and I can't find any data about how many
Office users there are. I'm looking for only the ones using versions that
support macros (I think 97 or later).

Part two to my question is how many of those users use macros. I'm guessing
it's less than 1%, but I was hoping to get real facts.

 

[Timothy L]

Can't say anything about macros, except for the fact that I very rarely use them myself. Although I do think
that Microsoft Office 95 did have support for macros.

With that said, I do know for a fact that out of those that have and use Microsoft Office, the vast majority
(I'd say about 75-90%) have and STILL use Microsoft Office 97 till this day.

Now you might ask why most use Microsoft Office 97 when there are 3 later versions out (Microsoft Office 2000,
Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and the yet to be released Microsoft "Office 12"). It is because
most find that Microsoft Office 97 fits their needs. As a former Microsoft Office 97 (Standard Edition) user
myself, I found that to be very true.



Times have changed and now that one of my PCs is running Windows XP, I had to ask questions about running
Microsoft Office 97 on it. Since I heard that many users had a hard time installing and updating Microsoft
Office 97 on Windows XP, I had to switch to a later version of Microsoft Office.

I set out to a local Computer Show and Sale to buy Microsoft Office (XP or later) at a cheap price (well,
cheaper than the MSRP price which is like $200-500). I found Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 (full
version) with a price tag of $140 and had to get it. This specific version of Microsoft Office Professional
Edition 2003 says on it "Academic Price" and just below that "Not for use in a commercial environment". Not
that I really cared as I was only using it for personal use anyway.

Now that I think about it, I really don't "need" the advanced XML Technology found in Microsoft Office
Professional Edition 2003. The most important part of it that I found most useful (when compared to Microsoft
Office Standard Edition 2003) was Microsoft Publisher.


Anyway...
I hope this information helps you.

 

[Echo S]

With that said, I do know for a fact that out of those that have and use

Microsoft Office, the vast majority

(I'd say about 75-90%) have and STILL use Microsoft Office 97 till this

day.

No way. Even my large corporate clients who are incredibly slow to upgrade
are using Office 2000.

 

[Og]

Number MS Office users world-wide: Several million.
Number of MS Office users world-wide who use macros: Less than the whole
group, but perhaps still in the millions.

The only hard data that it might be possible to find is: How many copies of
MS Office Suite + number of copies of individual MS applications that
Microsoft has sold.

Who uses macros? Almost anyone with a software add-in. Got Adobe Acrobat?
You got macros. Got an OCR program? You got macros. Added a Statistics
package to Excel? You got macros.

MS Office 3(something) for Windows 3.x supported macros.


steve

 

[Gordon]

Number MS Office users world-wide: Several million.
Number of MS Office users world-wide who use macros: Less than the
whole group, but perhaps still in the millions.

The only hard data that it might be possible to find is: How many
copies of MS Office Suite + number of copies of individual MS
applications that Microsoft has sold.

Who uses macros? Almost anyone with a software add-in. Got Adobe
Acrobat? You got macros. Got an OCR program? You got macros. Added a
Statistics package to Excel? You got macros.

I think the OP is talking about WRITING macros, not automated ones.

 

[Og]

I think the OP is talking about WRITING macros, not automated ones.

Given that Microsoft hosts two different newsgroups devoted solely to the
writing of MACROs, I think the OP will still have to call on the services of
an Omnipotent Being to determine how many people, world-wide, write macros.

steve

 

[Gordon]

Given that Microsoft hosts two different newsgroups devoted solely to
the writing of MACROs, I think the OP will still have to call on the
services of an Omnipotent Being to determine how many people,
world-wide, write macros.

LOL!

 

[jd_thorne]

Well, what I'm really getting at is that Microsoft has been very negligent in
the macro feature since it is used to write viruses. I'm trying to give
statistical evidence to show that a infinitesimally small fraction of Office
users actually user the macro feature.

I for example would consider myself an advanced user, but I installed Office
without the VB script support specifically so I wouldn't have to worry about
Microsoft's stupid decision to leave macros on by default.

 

[Bob I]

Given the generic nature of the question, the correct response is:
What would you like the number to be? <VBG>

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

I, however, do use macros for common mundane functions, such as marking a
document as a draft, inserting Rev notations, etc.

I think that people think macros are some arcane programming action when
actually "recording" a macro is very common where I work, as opposed to
"writing (programming) a macro" is the job of the IT guys who program macros
to perform complex actions such as scraping information from a mainframe
screen and dumping it into a pre-designed format and then printing and
mailing it.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, jd_thorne asked:

| Well, what I'm really getting at is that Microsoft has been very
| negligent in the macro feature since it is used to write viruses. I'm
| trying to give statistical evidence to show that a infinitesimally
| small fraction of Office users actually user the macro feature.
|
| I for example would consider myself an advanced user, but I installed
| Office without the VB script support specifically so I wouldn't have
| to worry about Microsoft's stupid decision to leave macros on by
| default.
|
| "Og" wrote:
|
|| Number MS Office users world-wide: Several million.
|| Number of MS Office users world-wide who use macros: Less than the
|| whole group, but perhaps still in the millions.
||
|| The only hard data that it might be possible to find is: How many
|| copies of MS Office Suite + number of copies of individual MS
|| applications that Microsoft has sold.
||
|| Who uses macros? Almost anyone with a software add-in. Got Adobe
|| Acrobat? You got macros. Got an OCR program? You got macros. Added a
|| Statistics package to Excel? You got macros.
||
|| MS Office 3(something) for Windows 3.x supported macros.
||
||
|| steve
||
||
|| ||| I'm doing research on Microsoft and I can't find any data about how
||| many Office users there are. I'm looking for only the ones using
||| versions that support macros (I think 97 or later).
|||
||| Part two to my question is how many of those users use macros. I'm
||| guessing
||| it's less than 1%, but I was hoping to get real facts.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

JD

Based on sales a few years ago, MS Office was used by a little over 90% of
all office suite users.. the rest were struggling with the complete lack of
integration in Lotus Smartsuite and WordPerfect, desperately trying to keep
the underdogs alive.. some still do that..

Apparently, IBM are going to change all of that.. the Lotus software
division is gearing up for a huge push that they hope will finally topple MS
Office.. lets hope for the sake of Lotus as a landmark in office software,
that it doesn't get the OS/2 sales team..

As I remember, Word macros had the same reception that exploding ear muffs
would get if one received aforementioned muffs as a birthday gift.. maybe it
is just as well that only 1% actually still write and use them..

 

[Beth Melton]

I think you should take a different approach to your research and
determine how many macro viruses have been created and how many have
actually posed a threat in the last 5-10 years. I suspect you'll find
there are very few.

Here are some facts:
1. Macro Security is set to High or Very High by default to *prevent*
macros from automatically running. IOW they are not on by default.
2. User created macros are used by a LOT of folks to modify the
behavior of a feature to their liking. They may not have written or
recorded the code themselves but they implement the macros.
3. Macros can be as simplistic as recording/playback so even novice
users can easily create them.
4. Numerous add-ins are created and distributed to control the
behavior of the application or to incorporate third-party features
into the applications.
5. Numerous companies utilize macros written by their developers to
automate and streamline their work processes.

btw, VB Script is not the same as VBA so macros are still 'enabled' on
your computer. They can easily be 'disabled' by going to
Tools/Macros/Macro Security and setting your security level to High
and turning off "Trust all installed add-ins and templates".

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/