Why do we use computers in our work? Hopefully it is to make things easier and get more work done in less time. So as we celebrate Labor Day, I wanted to refresh your memory about a couple of macros that can save you a lot of labor. Each of them can just as easily process 1-2 files as they can process more than 1000 files. Best of all, both of these useful tools are free and one of them is even supplied with CorelDRAW.

First up is the File Converter macro that has been supplied with CorelDRAW for several versions now. It allows you to select a folder of files and convert them from one format to another. That could be a bunch of CDR files that need to be updated to the latest version or saved back to the last version. Maybe you need to convert a bunch of files to or from Adobe Illustrator format. Of course those are just a couple of examples and I’m sure you’ll find many ways to put it to use if you give it a try. All if you have to do is select Tools | Macro | Run Macro (or look in CorelDRAW X5 or X6’s Macro Manager) for the File Converter macro. Launch it and explore all of the great things it can do. It is definitely a macro I use on a very regular basis.

The other macro is the Oberon Thumbnailer macro I wrote about in April. It does work in CorelDRAW X6, but only the 32-bit version. Hopefully an update for the 64-bit version can be released at some point. I absolutely love this macro and used it all the time to create catalogs of artwork. Some catalogs have captions and others show just the thumbnails. I can’t even begin to imagine the number of hours it saves me as doing the catalogs manually would be extremely time consuming.

Those two macros can save you a lot of labor so I sure hope they are part of your workflow. But for today, enjoy the holiday!