Office Ribbon Customisation in Visual Studio 2008

Posted By: Daniel Moth | Oct 17th, 2007 @ 3:58 AM

Author: Hi, I am Daniel Moth Smiley

Introduction: Explore Ribbon customisation. If you are a managed developer (e.g. Windows Forms) then you'll find that you already have the skills for extending Microsoft Office applications with your code. Visual Studio 2008 makes it really easy and that is what I demonstrate in this 20' video. For other resources, start at my blog post here.

Video download: Click on the image to play the video (from a streaming file). If you'd prefer to download the wmv packaged in a zip file, you may do so here.

Tags: en-GB, MS Office, OBA, Office, Orcas, UK, UKDevTeam, Visual Studio, VSTO

Rating:

Views (13,354)

Comments (12)

Downloads

em19at

Hi Daniel,
I just looked at your interesting Ribbon Designer screencast. But there's one more thing I want to know: By designing ribbon tabs using the Ribbon Designer, how can one use the same Ribbon Tab (and maybe also the same Group) in different add-ins? Up to now I was doing that with Ribbon XML by defining a namespace and a qualified ID ("idQ") for the tab (or the group), but I don't know how to do that by using the Ribbon Designer.
Thanks and regards
Ewald

Daniel Moth
Developer

Hi Ewald

Thanks for watching. Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question off the top of my head without investigating.

For generic VSTO questions, I hope you don't mind posting to the dedicated VSTO forum:
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=16

Good luck!

Cheers
Daniel

cush4x1

Thanks for the video.

I am following along...added a ribbon (visual designer)....F5...and get the following error:

Exception reading manifest from file:///[stuff]/ExcelAddIn1.vsto: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened.

...and then the exception text...Deployment manifest is not semantically valid

...Deployment manifest requires that you specify a publisher and a product

Any ideas?

Daniel Moth
Developer

Thank you for watching.

Hmm... Assuming you are trying all this on the RTM of Visual Studio 2008 and you are building at a file location where you have access rights, I'd guess you have a bad installation.

In fact, I suspect even without a ribbon you cannot F5 the VSTO project. I believe that the errors you are getting are related to ClickOnce which we are not explicilty using in this video.

Either way, please post this to the VSTO forums where you will get the proper assistance rather than my guesses and suspicions.

Good luck!

cush4x1

You are right. I created a new Office Addin...did nothing...F5...and get the same error. I also repaired my install and I still get the same error. I will take it up elsewhere as you suggested.

Daniel Moth
Developer

I am sorry I was right. Remember to try the cool ribbon customisation once you get your installation fixed Smiley

cush4x1

Finally got it to work. I believe it was my "very locked down" version of Vista.

In the last minute of your video, you mention that within the OutlookAddIn, RibbonType, the user can select which outlook inspectors to have the ribbon invoked.

Since Word, excel and powerpoint are in this list, can I infer that my ribbon - designed here - will be available within word/exce/powerpoint?

Daniel Moth
Developer

Glad you got it working. Regarding your additional question, sorry I am not sure what you can infer because I haven't personally tried the scenario you propose. Please post your question to the forums I mentioned further up and let me know if you don't get an answer.

jolcrews

good webcast! Question: if I use the Ribbon designer then export to XML will I still be able to use the Globals.Ribbons.Ribbon1 reference?