Another few emacs questions

[mowgli]

At times when writing a shell script, I am unable to tab and have to
use spaces instead (like when writing if statements). This only
happens sometimes. At other times this is fine.

This same problem I  have seen in jed. Is there a way to be able to
tab when needed?

How would you save a macro, in other words, map a key to use a command
sequence? What to put in .emacs?


Regards,
mowgli