The first part of the feature tour showed you how RibbonCustomizer lets you choose which tabs and groups are displayed on your Ribbon. This is the second part of the tour, which will show you how to create your own groups, or in other words, how to add and remove individual commands from the Ribbon. In this part of the tour, I will be using Word 2007 to demonstrate features and commands.

Some background

In the first part, I explained that a tab is composed of multiple groups. In the screenshot below of the PowerPoint Home tab e.g., you can see that the Clipboard and Font groups are highlighted in red. Only groups can be added to tabs, and individual controls can only be added to groups. In other words, a group serves as a container for controls, whereas a tab serves as a container for groups. In addition, I pointed out that Microsoft groups cannot be changed at all.

What does this mean for you? This means that the only way for you to customize individual commands on the Ribbon is to create a new group for each tab that you wish to customize. Having done this, you can then add the desired commands to these groups. You can only “fake” changing a Microsoft group by creating a new group with only the commands you want and removing the original Microsoft group.

Creating a new group

In order to get started with individual command customization, let us create a new group called Playground on the Word Home tab. To do this, open the Customize Ribbon dialog. Then select the Home tab on the left (1) and click New group (2), as shown in the screenshot below.

This will bring up the label dialog you are already familiar with from the first part of this feature tour. Enter Playground as the label and press OK. The dialog will then change to look like the following screenshot.

Adding, changing and removing the commands of a new group

This is still the same window, but a second tab labeled Customize Group has opened up (marked A). As in the layout of the first tab, the left hand side (marked in red) shows your group while the right hand side (marked in blue) shows the available Microsoft commands. The only thing shown on the left for your new group is the label of the group (marked B). If you want to change the label of the group, double-click the label to bring up the label dialog again. The Microsoft commands on the right are grouped the same way as they are grouped in the Quick Access Toolbar Customization Dialog of the Word Options. You can change the grouping using the drop-down box (marked C).

For this example, pick the entries labeled “About”, “Close” (the first one), “View Document Properties…” and “Style:” and add them to the group. You can add them either by double-clicking them or by using the Add command button (marked D). After you have added the fourth command, your dialog should look like the following screenshot.

You can use the arrow buttons highlighted in red to reorder the commands any way you want. If you do not change the order, click OK and switch to the Home tab, you will see the new Playground group, as shown below.

You can see in this screenshot that Word has added the commands column by column, with each column having three rows. The first three commands filled the first column from top to bottom, while the fourth command was added at the top of the second column. As this does look messy, we will go back into the Customize Ribbon dialog and change the group somewhat. After opening the Customize Ribbon dialog, select the Home tab on the left and then the Playground group on the bottom. Only after you have selected this group will the Customize group tab appear. You can switch to this tab by either clicking it (A) or using Edit group (B), as shown below.

On the Customize group tab, select the Close command on the left (1), check the Large checkbox (2), and finish by moving the Close command to the top of the list (3).

The result of this change can be seen on the Home tab after you left the dialog with OK. As you can see in the screenshot below, the Close command (A) is now shown with a large button that uses an entire column. The Styles command (B) is now on the bottom of the second column. The Styles command (B) is the good old Styles combobox used by previous versions of Word to select a Style. The Styles gallery on the Home tab replaces B in Word 2007, but unfortunately it is not a very effective tool for users of styles. For example, it does not always allow you to easily see the style of the current text. Therefore, if you use styles in Word, you will probably want to add B to your Ribbon.

It is also possible to remove a command from a group. For example, if you do not want the Close group in the Playground group, go back into the Customize Ribbon dialog, select the Home tab followed by the Playground group, and switch to the Customize group tab. Then select the Close command and either double-click it or use the Remove command button.

You can also add a separator to a group of yours. Separators can be seen on the Word View tab, for example. The two red arrows in the next screenshot indicate them.

To add a separator to your group, go back into the Customize group tab of the Customize Ribbon dialog and select Custom Items in the choose commands from the drop-down box on the right (1). Then add <Separator> to your group (2 & 3)and move it after the Close button (4).

The Playground on the Home tab will then show the separator as you can see in the following screenshot.

Finding commands

If you know where a particular command is in the Ribbon, or if you know that a command is not in the Ribbon at all, then finding it is rather simple. The choose commands from drop-down box gives you access to that. As you can see in the following screenshot, you can pick commands from the Office Menu and all Microsoft tabs that Word has.

If you do not know where a particular command is, you can select All Commands and try to find the command in the list of 1000+ commands that Word offers. As this is not very efficient, RibbonCustomizer allows you to search for a command. To search for a command, simply enter the term you want to search for in the search box highlighted in red in the next screenshot. After you enter your query in the search box, the choose commands from drop-down box (A) will automatically switch to Search for Command. The add-in searches as you type. The search is performed across all labels of all commands, all groups and tabs those commands are on, as well as the idMso’s for each command. The following screenshot shows you the result of typing “style” into the search box.

Summary

The first part and second part of this feature tour have given you an overview of how you can customize the Office 2007 Ribbon to suit your needs. The next parts will demonstrate the more advanced features of RibbonCustomizer.

Today, Office 2007 is launched for the second time. The first time was at the end of November when it was launched for business customers. Today is the launch to consumers who will be able to purchase it starting tomorrow.

The joint launch of Office and Vista today in New York City has the slogan “The WOW Starts Now!”. If you are, like me, not on the official invitation list for the launch event, then you can watch a webcast of the event featuring Bill Gates starting at 4:45 pm EST. Tomorrow, you can join Steve Ballmer at the Best Buy at 529 5th Ave (44th & 5th Avenue) in New York City at 10 am in kicking off the consumer availability of both products.

Coinciding with the Office 2007 launch, I am launching RibbonCustomizer Professional V1.0 today. This release gives you individual command customization, meaning you can populate the Ribbon with any commands you want to. So, not only is the most innovative User Interface launched today for the second time, but you can also pick up the the tool at the same time that allows you to fully customize it!

The question of the day is: Are you WOWed?

RibbonCustomizer Professional lets you customize the Office 2007 Ribbon to suit your needs. You can use RibbonCustomizer on all of the Ribbons in Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word 2007. This feature tour will give you a good idea of what you can do with this add-in and also show you how to do it.

In the first part, I will show you how to alter existing Ribbon tabs by changing the groups displayed on them and creating your own new tab. Although I will be using PowerPoint in this demonstration, you can follow these instructions in any of the five Ribbon applications, as the add-in works the same way in all of them.

You can also see this feature tour as a demo.

Getting Started

RibbonCustomizer can be found on the View tab of Excel, PowerPoint and Word. In Access and Outlook, you will find it on the Add-Ins tab. The following screenshot shows you what the RibbonCustomizer icon looks like in PowerPoint.

The Customize Ribbon button (indicated by the red arrow) is a so-called split button. This means that you can either click the icon itself to trigger a function, or you can click the text under the icon to open the associated menu (see screenshot below).

The Paste button on the Home tab is another split button that you are probably familiar with.

You can use either the icon of the split button or the first menu option (both highlighted with red arrows above) to bring up the Customize Ribbon dialog. The Customize Ribbon dialog is where you will perform all of your customizations. You can see the dialog in the following screenshot.

Familiarizing yourself with the Customize Ribbon dialog

The area of the dialog highlighted in red (left side) in the screenshot above is where your customization will be displayed. On the right, highlighted in blue, you will see the original Ribbon, as shipped by Microsoft. The top of both sides shows the tabs while the bottom shows the groups on the selected tab. This represents the basic organization of any Ribbon tab:

A tab is composed of multiple groups. In the screenshot above of the PowerPoint Home tab e.g., you can see that the Clipboard and Font groups are highlighted in red. Only groups can be added to tabs, and individual controls can only be added to groups. In other words, a group serves as a container for controls, whereas a tab serves as a container for groups.

Adding & removing Microsoft groups

Let us imagine that you want to add the Slides group shown above on the Home tab to the Insert tab. Perhaps you consider adding a new slide to be an insertion task, so you expect this feature to be on the Insert tab instead of the Home tab. To make this change, first select the Insert tab on the left (1), because that is where you want to move the Slides group. Next, select the tab that contains that group on the default Ribbon on the right. In our case, this is the Home tab (2). After selecting the tab, all you have to do is select the Slides group on the right (3) and either double-click it or use the Add Group button (4). You will then see the Slides group added to the Insert tab on the left (5).

If you want to change the position of the Slides group on the Insert tab, use the arrows on the left (6) to move the group either up or down. You can see in the following screenshot that I moved the Slides group to be after the Tables group. After you are done customizing the group, press the OK button in the left hand bottom corner and switch to the Insert tab. As you can see below, the Slides group now appears on the Insert tab.

It is easy to remove a group from a tab. Let us assume that you want to remove the Slides group completely from the Home tab, as you now have this group on the Insert tab. To do this, go back into the Customize Ribbon dialog and select the Home tab located on the left (1). Next, select the Slides group under Customize tab (2). You can then either double-click the Slides group or use the Remove Group button (3) to remove it. In this way, you could also remove the Slides group you added to the Insert tab earlier.

Adding & removing tabs

Adding and removing tabs is as simple as adding and removing groups. If you want to remove a tab, simply select it in the tab list on the left and use the Remove Tab button. You cannot double-click a tab itself to remove it in order to prevent accidental removal of tabs. To add a tab, select it on the right and use the Add Tab button. If you want to create your own new tab, use the New Tab button. Once you click New Tab, you will see the dialog shown in the screenshot below.

This dialog will appear whenever you are creating or editing a label for a custom item (e.g. a new tab or group). While creating or editing a label is pretty much self-explanatory (just enter the label and press OK), the language drop down box indicated by the arrow deserves some explanation. This box stems from the fact that Office is available in many different user interface languages. For example, the Insert tab in the English language version is called the Einfügen tab in the German language version. RibbonCustomizer allows you to create customizations that adjust themselves with the language. For example, you can enter one label in German and one in English. When the Office UI language is set to German, the German label will display, however otherwise you will see the English one. If you do not have to deal with more than user interface language, you can simply keep ignore the language drop down box, leaving it set to Default.

If you want to edit a particular tab label, double-click the tab on the left side to bring up the above dialog again.

Reset buttons

There are two reset buttons in the Customize Ribbon dialog: Reset Ribbon and Reset Tab. Reset Ribbon will delete all your customizations and restore your Ribbon to the Microsoft default. Reset Tab will reset the currently selected tab, leaving only the Microsoft groups that are on the tab by default. In the case of your own tab, using Reset Tab will eliminate all groups in the tab.

Limitations

RibbonCustomizer will not allow you to remove the tab that contains itself. The obvious reason for this is that if you were to remove the tab, you would lose access to the add-in and thus could never alter any customization you had made.

In addition to this, there is unfortunately a list of things that you cannot do due to the limitations of the underlying Microsoft technology (RibbonX) used by RibbonCustomizer. There is no way around these limitations, which means that everyone customizing the Ribbon is limited by them.

Microsoft protected their own tabs and groups. This means that you cannot change the order of the Microsoft tabs (e.g. you cannot place the Insert tab before the Home tab), nor can you change the order of the Microsoft groups in their default locations (e.g. you cannot reorder the groups on the Home tab, but you can add any group to the Home tab and place it wherever you want it on the tab). Microsoft groups cannot be changed at all. You cannot use Microsoft contextual tabs as core tabs and vice versa. The groups on the Add-Ins tab that hold the UI for legacy (pre-2007) add-ins cannot be added to any other tab. You can, however, add them to the QAT. Last, but not least, any UI components added to your Ribbon by an add-in are not shown in the Customize Ribbon dialog, as Office does not provide a mechanism for providing this information to any add-in, including RibbonCustomizer.

RibbonCustomizer V1.0 is now feature complete. You can download the beta now.

In addition to all the features of RibbonCustomizer V0.9, RibbonCustomizer V1.0 allows you to

• Create new groups
• Populate those groups with any Microsoft command
• You can choose between small and large icons for all supported commands (buttons, menus, split buttons)
• You can add separators to your groups

That means, RibbonCustomizer V1.0 supports individual command customization for Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. Give the beta a try today!

Instead of posting lots of RibbonX related posts, as I had previously said I would, I got very busy working on RibbonCustomizer. I have individual command customization (meaning, adding and removing individual commands to/from the Ribbon) now working in an early beta build. To read more about it, see screenshots and provide feedback, take a look at my forum post about this.

Update: I just posted the first beta version.