RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon

Introduction

Welcome to the wonderful world of Ribbon customizations. With the advent of Office 2007, users and developers alike are faced with major transitions. Office applications have a whole new look, and the Ribbon is the headliner. While it may have strong appeal to new users, adapting to the Ribbon can be challenging to those of us who are accustomed to the legacy menu and toolbar system. With the advent of the Ribbon, you not only lose the drop-down menus that were always there, but the custom menus and toolbars have also departed. However, we are not stuck with Microsoft's Ribbon which can appear overwhelming with thousands of commands; and you don't need advanced training or mastery of coding languages to tailor the Ribbon to your needs.

That's where this book comes in. Driven by their passion for helping others to enjoy and maximize the experience of working with Office applications, the team of authors has created a resource that enables both users and developers to customize the Ribbon to the extent that they desire. Whether that means replacing the Ribbon with familiar toolbars from prior versions, using photos and labels to personalize commands, or merely creating custom groups of existing tools, the book provides instructions and working examples so that you have the tools and confidence to accomplish your goals. Not only that, but the task can be accomplished using XML and VBA, so there is no need to purchase expensive software or learn complicated programming languages. ...