With the introduction of VBA in Excel 5, the terminology used to describe the Excel programmable features got a bit muddy. For example, VBA is a programming language, but it also serves as a macro language. So what do you call something written in VBA and executed in Excel? Is it a macro, or is it a program? Excel's online help often refers to VBA procedures as macros, so you're safe to go with that terminology. But this stuff also is a program. If you really want to make sense of how Visual Basic for Applications works with Excel, you need to be flexible, remain calm, and make friends with a reliable resource of inside information.

(By the way, macro does not stand for Messy And Confusing Repeated Operation. Rather, it comes from the Greek makros, which means large — which also describes your paycheck after you become an expert macro programmer.)