SubscribeUser: RibbonCustomizer Add-In: Overview
I wanted to spend some time discussing the RibbonCustomizer Add-In I showed in my last user post. The goal of the add-in is to allow any user to modify his or her own ribbon to better suit his or her needs.
As you can see from the screenshot, the add-in installs itself on the View tab for Excel. It blends in with the ribbon itself and a user won’t be able to distinguish it from any command in Office. However, once the button “Customize Ribbon” is clicked, the add-in informs the user that it is just that, an add-in. It is good style to tell a user that he or she is working with an add-in and not a built-in function, because a user will always first blame Office otherwise if something doesn’t work, even if it is something with an add-in.
I chose to use one large menu button for my add-in in order to use the least amount of space on the ribbon possible. The option to “Show/Hide Customization” allows one to disable or enable all customizations quickly.
Customization Schemes is a concept born out of my pet-peeve “eye candy” WordArt Styles. The idea is to have certain customizations that can be downloaded from the Internet that are geared to achieving one particular thing. For example, there might be a customization scheme to replace the WordArt Styles with the text formatting tools. There might be another one to change the Charting Tabs into ones that are better geared to power users than the ones in Beta 2. A user can install these customization schemes separately, but have them all applied at once (or determine individually which ones to apply and which ones not).
When you click Customize, the following window opens
This window allows a user to change things around with tabs and groups. The right hand side displays the ribbon as provided by Microsoft. The left hand side displays the current customization (as stored in the file. The add-in does not actually query the current ribbon. Why is a topic reserved for the developer section). Tabs can be reordered, removed or added from the MS tab list. Groups for individual tabs can be reordered (partially), removed or added from a list of MS groups.
This functionality allows one to rearrange tabs and groups. As groups are the fundamental buildings blocks of the Office 2007 Ribbon UI, being able to customize them should fulfill the needs of a lot of users.
What do you think? Post a comment and let me know what you think about the add-in and what other features you would like to see!
June 6th, 2006 at 17:07
I like it. Does the ribbon update in realtime as you customize?
Also, any idea why Microsoft isn’t including this functionality in the final product?
June 6th, 2006 at 17:47
Hi Jeff,
the update is sort-of in realtime. When you close the dialog, it will update the ribbon (not my choice. MS doesn’t exactly make reloading RibbonX customizations easy). The dialog is in my current alpha version modal, because I ran into some threading issues with the non-modal version. Until I figure out what’s wrong, it will stay modal.
MS seems to have developed a serious aversion to user customization. I talked about this in a post dedicated to user customization: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/05/24/9
Patrick
June 7th, 2006 at 9:43
Thanks Patrick.
August 9th, 2006 at 7:57
Hi, Patrick,
I have read some technical articles about the new Office 2007 model. However, I could not get the answer for the following question. Maybe you could help guide me to the answer.
For Word 2007, would that be possible to check the current status of the TABs in VBA Macro code? For example, if my program needs to know which tab in the RIBBOB UI is currently selected, would there be any way to do this?
August 9th, 2006 at 8:14
Hi Eric,
potentially. There is no built-in method to do this, but there might be a workaround. Currently it’s not working well, so I’ll hold off discussing it until the next beta release is out. My hope is that a particular bug is fixed in it.
If and when this workaround works well, I’ll be blogging about it.
Sorry for the wait,
Patrick
September 17th, 2006 at 14:44
Hi Patrick,
as many users I am a bit worried about our good old VBA which I started to work with in the 90’s and gained some good knowledge and experience with it. For now, I don’t really know what I will be able to do in Excel with my VBA knowledge in the future. Obviously, there is no way to customize the Ribbon using VBA. Any other limitations?
What about VBA in the future? Do we all have to get used to the superior language VSTO? Is there any hope Microsoft will provide the option for a “classic view?” for retros like me?
Sorry for the newbee-questions but a reply would be highly appreciated!
Thanks
Mike
September 17th, 2006 at 16:33
Hi Mike,
it’s not 100% true that you can’t customize the ribbon with VBA. However, you’ll have to embed the RibbonX code into your document/spreadsheet/presentation/template file and provide callbacks in VBA. See my other posts on that topic. I used Word as example, but it works similarly with Excel.
I don’t know about the future of VBA. You’d have to ask Microsoft that question.
If you mean with “classic view” a traditional UI with menus and toolbars, then you are out of luck. There will be no such thing in Office 2007. You are going to have to get used to the Ribbon.
Patrick
October 18th, 2006 at 2:06
[…] If you simply don’t want to learn RibbonX, don’t have the time to learn it or consider XML to be out of your league, but still want to able to customize the Ribbon, you will have to turn to third parties. One of those third parties would be myself, as I am working on an add-in called RibbonCustomizer that allows a user to customize the Ribbon with a simple to use UI directly in an Office program. I made an alpha-version of the program available for Beta 2 (it won’t work with B2TR or RTM), and will provide the final version closer to the release of the OEM and retail versions of Office 2007. In the meantime, you can read an overview of RibbonCustomizer. […]
October 28th, 2006 at 3:14
[…] I have spent quite some time on my RibbonCustomizer add-in. It now works with Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word B2TR. I am still working on adding Outlook support. One of the questions I am struggling with right now is what to include in the Freeware version of my add-in, and for what features I should charge something. If you have an opinion on this, read the overview of my add-in and post a comment here. Thanks! […]
November 11th, 2006 at 11:29
Hi Patrick,
To add an anecdote on this topic: I just replaced a PC and faced the question of whether to put on my old Office 2000 (& buy Office 2007 when it comes) or go with Office 2003.
I customize a lot - especially Excel - including macros run by buttons & new menu items. Because of that I perhaps qualify as a power user, but I am definitely not an early adopter. Its just that I have been using Excel since 1993, I customize any repetitive task to save me time, and I don’t want to spend (waste) time learning a new way to do what I’ve been doing for the last 13 years.
Reading about the lack of customization with ribbons made it an easy decision: I bought Office 2003 and will avoid upgrading to 2007 for as long as I possibly can.
What this means is that I will probably only ever buy Office 2007 if I can also customize it, and I would certainly be prepared to pay for that.
As to what features to enable in the freeware: my suggestion is to make it as close to the full product as possible, but limit the number of changes you can make if you don’t have the paid version. I know I’d want to be sure that I could achieve all the different types of changes I want (buttons, macros, menu items, hyperlinks to frequently used files) before I bought something.
Another suggestion, perhaps unrealistic: if you could give people the ability to mimic as closely as possible the “classic” look - i.e. to create one tab with everything showing, and with small space-efficient buttons so that you can actually get them all in one screen, instead of this bizarre spread out text & graphics look that requires multiple tabs just to fit them - that would make moving to Office 2007 much more palatable to people like me.
Guy
November 11th, 2006 at 12:06
Hi Guy,
the kind of customization you are looking for is not even going to be in the first Professional version and definitely will never make it into the Freeware version. Just getting basic customization of tabs and groups done was a lot of work and hence that is all there is for the first version (the second Professional version will be a free upgrade).
People are of course welcome to use my add-in for mimicking a classic look, but I will not do anything specifically in that regard. The Ribbon is a new UI and everyone has to get used to it. Trying to work around that by making a 2003-like UI in 2007 is counterproductive.
If you want an Office 2003-like UI, then stick with Office 2003.
Patrick
November 12th, 2006 at 13:02
Hi Patrick,
Thanks - it sounds like I was very optimistic in what to expect from customization. It also sounds as though I will indeed be putting off the 2007 upgrade for many years.
Good luck with the product.
Guy