Dynamic Ribbon

[CG]

I am ready to transition to Office 2007. I have an add-in that has
dynamic menu's created. I read in a file on start-up and create the
menu names and check to see what files are in a folder to determine
other menu items. In other words the number of menu items and names
are not hard coded. I also change the menu depending on what is on
the title slide of the active presentation.

I assume this is possible in 2007. Would someone direct me to
articles, examples, etc. that will help me get started. I am doing
this in a corporate environment so free tools must be free for
corporations to use. The add-in is not being sold. I currently use
just PPT for creating the add-in.

Any direction would be very much appreciated.

CG

 

[Matti Vuori]

I am ready to transition to Office 2007. I have an add-in that has
dynamic menu's created. I read in a file on start-up and create the
menu names and check to see what files are in a folder to determine
other menu items. In other words the number of menu items and names
are not hard coded. I also change the menu depending on what is on
the title slide of the active presentation.

I assume this is possible in 2007.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, you can only dynamically add and edit
items in the Add-Ins tab, which probably is not what you want. Your old
code should do this automatically without modifications, which you may have
noticed already. That was really the good news...

But if you want your own tab, you can only create it statically. See:
* http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/customuieditor.aspx - a nice tool
you can use to define the menus in the Fluent Ribbon UI
* http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb462634(office.12).aspx -
article about how the UI works

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am ready to transition to Office 2007. I have an add-in that has
dynamic menu's created. I read in a file on start-up and create the
menu names and check to see what files are in a folder to determine
other menu items. In other words the number of menu items and names
are not hard coded. I also change the menu depending on what is on
the title slide of the active presentation.

I assume this is possible in 2007. Would someone direct me to
articles, examples, etc. that will help me get started. I am doing
this in a corporate environment so free tools must be free for
corporations to use. The add-in is not being sold. I currently use
just PPT for creating the add-in.

There's no more menu in PPT 2007, so you'll need to think about what sort
of UI you want to use from now on. If you load your existing add-in,
you'll see a new Add-ins tab on the ribbon and your add-in will create its
user interface there.

If you want to add your own tabs, groups and buttons to the ribbon, or
tack your own groups onto the existing ones on a tab, you can do that
using special RibbonXML that you add to your PPTM file (and/or the PPAM
you compile from it). Normally these are static, but you can control
things like names, functions and possibly visibility by using callbacks;
in other words, instead of having the ribbon code tell PPT "My button
caption is BlahBlah", you can tell it "When you need a caption for me,
call this function; it'll return the string to use for the caption."

There's a good book on it: "RibbonX, Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon",
from Wiley; authors are Martin, Puls and Henning. It covers pretty much
everything you need to know, and from a VBA user's point of view.

 

[Joseph M. Newcomer]

Don't do it. I started a new course using PPT 2007 (everyone told me I should move to it)
and I have regretted every minute of the experience. It is a horror, it is full of bugs
that have made it unusable, the GUI sucks, and the capability you want is not there (hey,
who would need to customize anything, when the Ribbon Bar represents perfection?)
joe

I am ready to transition to Office 2007. I have an add-in that has
dynamic menu's created. I read in a file on start-up and create the
menu names and check to see what files are in a folder to determine
other menu items. In other words the number of menu items and names
are not hard coded. I also change the menu depending on what is on
the title slide of the active presentation.

I assume this is possible in 2007. Would someone direct me to
articles, examples, etc. that will help me get started. I am doing
this in a corporate environment so free tools must be free for
corporations to use. The add-in is not being sold. I currently use
just PPT for creating the add-in.

Any direction would be very much appreciated.

CG

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: (e-mail address removed)
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm