As you can see from reading the frame here, I use WordPress to power the blog. I wasn’t really happy with the skin, though, so I took a browse through the WordPress theme gallery, and found the Cordobo-Green-Park theme. It was exactly what I wanted… only it was green. I really liked the layout, but not the colour.
And so here comes the power of the net. I accidentally found this page, which happens to be all about adjusting this theme to use the exact colours I want!

I’ve never used GIMP before, so didn’t know if I’d like it. I also didn’t know if it would run on Vista. Rather than clutter my PC, I created a new Virtual PC (using a differencing disk off my master), and had a fresh WinXP OS up an running in five minutes. I downloaded and installed GIMP, and followed the awesome instructions at the afore mentioned link to customize my skin. Perfect!

The only comment I have on the tutorial is that I had to do tons of gif and png images, but it didn’t take too long, and I’m way happier with the look of the site now.

I’ve decided that it is time to start maintaining a Table of Contents for my Ribbon blog posts. It’s just getting a little too hard to find them all.

I’ll keep modifying this page, updating it as I add more and more examples.

RibbonX Book

Fellow Excel MVP Robert Martin, Access MVP Teresa Hennig and I have written a book called RibbonX – Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon. This book builds on many of the things discussed on this blog, as well as adds much more material not covered here. Some examples from the book can be seen here:

• Creating a RibbonX Customization Template for the CustomUI Editor
• The entire Chapter 7 is available for download, including the example files!

If you’re interested in seeing more than just Chapter 7, you can buy the book here.

Other Useful Links

Using the CustomUI Editor tool (A free download that you are crazy not to use!)

The Excel 2007 VBA Programmers Reference RibbonX chaper is available for download, and is fantastic. I’d highly recommend giving it a read.

RibbonX development references compliments of Patrick Schmid, OneNote MVP.

Office 2007 Icon Gallery A collection of Add-ins and Global Templates for Excel, Word and Powerpoing, which will help you find the idMso’s of the built in menu commands. (Some more history about the original incarnation of these files can be found here.)

List of Office Control ID’s from Microsoft for all the Office applications. (Read more here.)

MSDN Articles of Interest:

• Customizing the Office (2007) Ribbon User Interface for Developers (Part 1 of 3)
• Customizing the Office (2007) Ribbon User Interface for Developers (Part 2 of 3)
• Customizing the Office (2007) Ribbon User Interface for Developers (Part 3 of 3) (This contains all the callback signatures)

Examples on this blog

Part 1

• A basic demonstration of creating a button group on the Ribbon, and the VBA procedures needed in order to react to button clicks.

Part 2

• Several examples of creating buttons on the Ribbon. These examples include:
• Example showing that there are three small buttons to one column of button controls on the Ribbon
• Showing how to add a group to an existing tab (instead of a new one)
• Using large buttons (instead of the normal small ones) on a Ribbon group
• Mixing large and small buttons on one group

Part 3

• Finding and using Excel’s built in Ribbon images on button controls.

Part 4

• Shows how to use your own picture on a Ribbon button, rather than just the default images allowed in Microsoft Office.

Part 5

• An example of creating a checkbox on the Ribbon, and having a VBA message box pop up to tell you which way the checkbox is set.

Part 6

• An example how to change the value of a Ribbon control (checkbox) from a VBA procedure using a callback, (not from clicking the checkbox itself.)

Part 7

• Demonstration of using a checkbox to control the visibility of a button on the Ribbon. Contains a detailed walk-through of the setup and order of code execution.
• (Temporarily unavailable)

Part 8

• Shows how to create a very basic dynamic menu in a Ribbon group.

Part 9

• An example of using an editBox control to change the name of a button on the Ribbon.

Part 10

• Using an editBox and a Button to rename worksheets. This article is built around displaying the interaction between the ribbon and application interaction.

Part 11

• A tutorial in the creation of a RibbonX button, and a complete dissection of the code used to create it. Contains images and explanation to show what each and every piece of the code accomplishes.

Creating a dynamic menu

• This example shows the creation of a menu which lists all Excel files in a directory, and will open the selected file when you click it. It also allows you to change the file path and update the menu to reflect the files in the new path.

Sharing A Ribbon Tab With Multiple Workbooks

• An exploration of creating an Add-in to act as a RibbonUI container, and how to add controls to that tab from a different workbook.

Debugging RibbonX Invalidate/InvalidateControl issues

• Some observations and recommendations to avoid having another add-in conflict with yours.

Examples from other sites:

Ron deBruin’s examples on working with:
• The QAT
• The Ribbon
  

Other Examples

• Willy’s Freeware
• Xtreme Visual Basic

Note: If you have examples on your site, and would like them added here, please contact me.