Macros for Dummies

Hello all, I am a brand new DM and new to Roll20 AND coding! I DM a group with a whole slew of kids and adults. Most of my party contains people who are neurospicy or technologically illiterate, myself included. I Just discovered macros but for the life of me I can't seem to figure out how to make them work. I've got basic things down, but I want to make life easier on my party and create organized drop downs of things like skill checks, that way they can just go through that rather than searching a character sheet (seriously, we did an entire campaign without macros and it took much longer than it should have because the character sheets were a problem to navigate. I clearly have no clue what I'm doing so if someone can explain this to me like I'm 5 or if anyone has a prewritten general macro (Not tied to just one character, I'd love if the same thing can be used by the entire party) I would greatly appreciate it. I want to learn but this stuff is gibberish to me. Thank you!

Welcome, Natalie! There are definitely some tools out there (from pre-fabbed "all in one" solutions to "here is a toolset to let you build something customized to YOUR tastes"). The best place to start is by letting us know what sheet you're using (at least for your current game). Then we can suggest different solutions in the range of options available to you... having the sheet will help us give you something that works immediately, and it working immediately will help with you starting to grok the way things work (believe me, I get that it can be strange and a lot to keep straight!).

Hi Natalie!  I'm presuming that you're playing 5E D&D?  If so, which character sheets are in use for your game? I know you were asking for help with skills, but (presuming 5e) I wanted to share a Healing potion macro that YouTube Roll20 guru Nick Olivo shares a lot &{template:default} {{name=Healing Potion}} {{  ?{Potion|  Regular, *Healing Potion Used:* [[2d4+2]]|  Greater, *Greater Healing Potion Used:* [[4d4+4]]|  Superior, *Superior Healing Potion Used:* [[8d4+8]]|  Supreme, *Supreme Healing Potion Used:* [[10d4+20]]  }   HP recovered }} If you go to the Collections tab in your game, click the +Add button, and copy this into the box that opens up (and name it something like HealingPotions - you can't have spaces, it will fill in a - between words),  you'll create a macro that lets you choose between the strength of the healing potion and roll how much it heals.  When you make the macro, on that box if you scroll down, there is a check box for Show as Token Action?  That means that every token in the game will have that macro show as an option so they can click on it when they use one.  They will still need to apply the healing themselves (as changing the tokens requires the API with a pro subscription) but it helps. This forum is filled with tons of other tricks, and skilled users ,and Nick's YouTube channel is fantastic for the clear and simple way he explains things. Good luck, and have fun!