To repeat a series of steps only a few times, replay them directly from the History palette; see Repeating steps, Applying steps to other objects, and Copying and pasting steps between documents. To automate a task that you perform often, create a new command that performs that task automatically; see Creating new commands from history steps and Recording commands.
Some mouse movements, such as clicking or dragging to select something in the Document window, can't be played back or saved as part of saved commands. When you make such a movement, a black line appears in the History palette (although the line does not become obvious until you perform another action). To avoid this, use arrow keys instead of mouse movement to move the insertion point within the Document window. Certain other steps also aren't repeatable, such as dragging a page element to somewhere else on the page. When you perform such a step, a menu-command icon with a small red X appears in the History palette.
When you replay steps, they are exactly the same as the steps that you performed previously; you can't modify the steps as you replay them. For example, if you previously changed the color of a table cell to be red, applying that step to another table cell changes that cell's color to red as well; you can't specify a different color when you apply the set-background-color step to a new image.