Posts Tagged ‘Ribbon’

New version of Add-in Express sample COM add-in projects

Quick news: we've developed a new version of sample COM add-in projects that we provide in the downloadable archive on the Add-in Express .NET Downloads page... Read the rest of this entry →

Office context menu add-in for Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint

The blog is about an add-in (with the source code) that adds a button to all context menus of Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio and Word in Office 2010-2013. The button shows the name of the context menu.... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing the Excel User Interface: What is and isn’t customizable

Anytime Excel runs into a business process, users discover they require more of Excel. They can have more too by extending Excel via its API. Today, I'll cover what you user interface customizations are available to you when developing Excel add-ins with Add-in Express... Read the rest of this entry →

Add-in Express sim-ships with Visual Studio 2013

Good news for .NET developers! Add-in Express will ship simultaneously with the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2013... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing Microsoft Word ribbons and toolbars: VB.NET, C#

A popular user interface customization is custom ribbons and custom toolbars. I think you know what these are and we'll cover how to create both of them for Microsoft Word. We'll start with Ribbon and work our way back to the legacy toolbars (aka CommandBars). ... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing Word User Interface: What is and isn’t customizable

But for the advanced user who views Word as essential to their daily grind at the office… Word needs to do some adjusting to the user. This user has well defined grooves in their workday. They work spans across multiple teams, departments, companies, and applications. Microsoft Word can be a player in these processes and you can put Word in the best position possible. But how?... Read the rest of this entry →

Developing powerful Outlook add-ins with Visual Studio (VB.NET, C#)

With the recent Beginning Outlook Development series complete, we thought it would be a good idea to do a demo that shows how easy/simple/relatively painless it is to build a powerful Outlook add-in with Visual Studio ... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing built-in Office Ribbon groups – C# Excel add-in example

Customizing the built-in Microsoft Office ribbon groups is something that many people have tried but they usually hit a brick wall in the process. Unfortunately, it is not possible to customize the built-in ribbon groups, however, you can create your custom Office ribbon group and "replace" the built-in group with your own... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating a custom ribbon for Outlook 2013, 2010 and toolbar for Outlook 2007, 2003 – C# sample

The Outlook UI provides a lot of customization options, but one thing almost all Outlook add-ins share is either a ribbon tab or a toolbar or two. The Ribbon UI was introduced in Office 2007 although only the Inspector windows actually used it. The Explorer window still used the traditional menus and toolbars from previous Outlook versions... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: Develop Office 2013 add-ins with Visual Studio 2012 Express

In this video, I show how to create an add-in for Microsoft Office 2013 Outlook, Excel and Word and add a custom ribbon using Add-in Express for Office and .net with Visual Studio Express 2012. Enjoy!... Read the rest of this entry →

The Outlook UI: Explorer and Inspector Windows. What is customizable?

It can take some time to familiarize yourself and understand the various different components of the Outlook UI. Outlook is made up of windows, panes and forms. The two types of Outlook windows are Explorer and Inspector windows... Read the rest of this entry →

Excel 2013 add-ins in Visual Studio 2012: Getting started for VSTO developers

In this article we'll have a look at how you, as a VSTO developer, can get started developing add-ins for Excel using Add-in Express and Visual Studio 2012.... Read the rest of this entry →

How to preserve the ribbon control state (or, if you develop custom Outlook ribbons…)

If you decide to build an Outlook add-in, you're going to want to customize the user interface. If you start customizing the Outlook user interface, you'll probably build a custom ribbon. If you build a custom Outlook ribbon, you'll want to put some controls on it like a button that toggles, a checkbox, and a drop down control ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to dynamically bind Outlook add-in UI elements to the context

Something that I've noticed is that if you want to really start bending Microsoft Outlook to your programming will, you need to start embracing and combining the use of message classes and content types when developing Outlook add-ins... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating a shared ribbon for Office 2013: Word, Excel and PowerPoint

In this article, I want to show you how can create single Microsoft Office 2013 and 2010 ribbon and share it with Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. This scenario is one of many where Add-in Express shines. Using the Add-in Express framework, you can easily build a shared ribbon in a matter of minutes. Best of all, you can also quickly configure your controls to display (or not to display) in the Office host applications your add-in targets... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing Outlook 2010 and 2013 Ribbon tabs, buttons, groups: C#, VB.NET

The Ribbon revolutionized the Office user interface when originally introduced in Office 2007. Using Visual Studio's out-of-the-box tools, you can build custom Ribbon's for your solutions. BUT… Microsoft provides visual designers for a small subset of ribbon controls. Meaning, you will need to write lots of XML to complete your customization ... Read the rest of this entry →

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