Modifying and Customizing Office 2007 Ribbon UI

[tillo4]

hmm sounds complicated intriguing and what the heck will try it out thanks

[ハイドン]

Thanks for the tutorial. I've a few questions, however, if anyone can help.

I use Word for different purposes on my different machines, and when I am typing something lengthy I generally like to just get the text down before messing around with any complex formatting. For that reason, I've made some customised toolbars in Office 2003, which I've been using up until now. After reading this tutorial I decided to try to convert some of these into the ribbon, but upon making my first one I have encountered a problem. The ribbon is far too high, and with the few commands I inserted into the groups I had thought that the ribbon would be shrunk in order to show them in the best way possible. Instead it appears to show three rows of buttons, when it could put them all horizontally on one. Is there anything that can be added into the XML data to force the ribbon to only use one row?

Too much wasted space!

From what I've seen of the ribbon interface, I've come to like it somewhat, but if I can't clean it up and remove the many distracting formatting buttons I may have to go back to 2003, which I really don't want to have to do.

[spacesurfer]

Short answer - no.

Reason is that the height of all the tabs is 3 icons high. You cannot set the height of individual tabs. So, no matter if you were to arrange the icons to go from left to right (instead of top to bottom), it will still be 3 icons high and you'll have space.

From the looks of it, you don't have enough to make a new tab anyway. It's probably better if you add your commands to an existing tab(s).

However, but, also.... there is a way to group your tabs to make the buttons go from left to right instead of top to bottom by using the

<buttonGroup id="groupid">
		<button id="button1" image="buttonimage1" screentip="tip1" />
		<button id="button2" image="buttonimage2" screentip="tip2" />
</buttonGroup>

Edited February 2, 2009 by spacesurfer

[ハイドン]

Ah well. I suppose I can move the quick launch bar and customise that for what I want, but it is a less elegant solution. I hope Microsoft allows resizable ribbon bars (at least custom ones) in the next version of office. All the same, thanks for the quick reply.

[purpleronnie]

This is absolutely superb! I'd been trawling and trawling for so long to no avail then came across this and in one short day have come on leaps and bounds. Thank you Spacesurfer!

[spacesurfer]

My pleasure.

It does seem, however, that not many people are interested in changing their default ribbon ui. i, for one, couldn't stand the default ribbon ui. i had to have it the way i want it.

i'm glad the this method works with office 2010 as well!

[tgsa]

Hey, thanks for the great guide. I'm somewhat new to modifying this and need some help. What I'd like to do is create a new tab (which I can do) and use some buttons for specific symbols (such as the summation symbol or tickmarks). I know how to get the buttons on, but how do I get it to link a button to insert a specific symbol? Is it possible to do this just using xml code or do I have to use macros? I'd like to set this up on multiple computers to work with all spreadsheets, but I know word or excel don't have macros enabled automatically and if I can avoid using macros I'd prefer that.

Thanks again!

[spacesurfer]

You can't do with just the xml. The xml only points to VBA code (i.e. macros) or visual c++. xml does not and cannot run commands on its own.

You will have to use macros. Just record the macro for what you're trying to do. Save the final file as .dotm for the macro-enabled template. It doesn't matter what you're macro settings are. As long as normal.dotm is macro-enabled, you shouldn't have problems.

[ScottJ]

For office 2007. The ribbon xml file header is

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui">

Bug for office 2010, the following header is better

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2009/07/customui" onLoad="OnLoad">

http://www.ucmapi.com