Migrating Add-ins to Office 2007

[TDK]

I have an add-in written for Office pre 2007. It provides some
functionality that is invoked by a toolbar button. The toolbar appears
when the add-in is loaded and goes when it is unloaded.

Now this doesn't work in Office 2007 because the ribbon has replaced
the toolbar. Nevertheless the underlying code works because you can
use the VB editor to manually invoke it.

I have been asked to migrate the add-in to 2007.

I would appreciate some advice on how to change this. What is the
standard to use instead of the toolbar?

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

Ron de Bruin has a lot of information on Ribbon usage. Start here:

http://www.rondebruin.nl/ribbon.htm


HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP

 

[TDK]

Appreciate your response

I was under the impression that MS intended the ribbons to be pretty
much fixed. Perhaps that's a misreading on my part.

When I wrote add-ins (several years ago) there were two uses:

1. custom functions (these still appear to work because you just type
the function as before).
2. standardised macros. ie running the same macro over multiple
workbooks. Initially I created these as separate workbooks but users
were confused by having to load a second workbook to get access to the
macros, so to avoid this I converted them to an add-in with toolbar
buttons to invoke. That meant the macros were there without the user
having to know to start the worksheet.

At the time, I read various articles (including MVPs) recommending
that the standard approach was to use add-ins to achieve these
objectives. So I felt I was conforming.

I'm reluctant to modify the ribbon if that's a non-standard approach.
Is the current advice to modify the ribbon or is there a new
recommended standard method?

In other words, if a coder wrote a generic macro that he wanted to
deploy to multiple users (and avoid the confusion caused by multiple
spreadsheets), how do you recommend they do this in Office 2007?



PS: I've tried to keep this brief but all the macros in the add-in
have forms and do some sort of manipulation based upon the input
parameters. We tried using a macro workbook in the XLSTART directory
but several users had their own already which created a clash.

 

[Ron de Bruin]

Maybe you like this option instead of creating your own custom tab
http://www.rondebruin.nl/qat.htm

--

Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl/tips.htm




Appreciate your response

I was under the impression that MS intended the ribbons to be pretty
much fixed. Perhaps that's a misreading on my part.

When I wrote add-ins (several years ago) there were two uses:

1. custom functions (these still appear to work because you just type
the function as before).
2. standardised macros. ie running the same macro over multiple
workbooks. Initially I created these as separate workbooks but users
were confused by having to load a second workbook to get access to the
macros, so to avoid this I converted them to an add-in with toolbar
buttons to invoke. That meant the macros were there without the user
having to know to start the worksheet.

At the time, I read various articles (including MVPs) recommending
that the standard approach was to use add-ins to achieve these
objectives. So I felt I was conforming.

I'm reluctant to modify the ribbon if that's a non-standard approach.
Is the current advice to modify the ribbon or is there a new
recommended standard method?

In other words, if a coder wrote a generic macro that he wanted to
deploy to multiple users (and avoid the confusion caused by multiple
spreadsheets), how do you recommend they do this in Office 2007?



PS: I've tried to keep this brief but all the macros in the add-in
have forms and do some sort of manipulation based upon the input
parameters. We tried using a macro workbook in the XLSTART directory
but several users had their own already which created a clash.

 

[TDK]

Thanks for response.

There's another thread (started by John M) which seems to suggest that
toolbars can be shown in the Addin tab of the ribbon. This sounds like
the solution except that I can't see an Add-in tab on my ribbon and
there's nothing in help or that I can find in Google search to display
the add-in tab.

Any idea?