Posts Tagged ‘Ribbon’

100% version neutrality for your Office extensions

Finally, when you completed your add-in, there is no need to build separate setup programs for different versions of Office. Generating a setup program is as simple as right-clicking your project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer and selecting Create Setup Project from the context menu... Read the rest of this entry →

Outlook context sensitivity: show custom UI for certain folders and items types

Add-in Express makes it possible to display your custom UI elements based on various Outlook components. Elements such as toolbars, toolbar controls, ribbon tabs, ribbon tab controls or Advanced Form Regions can be hidden or displayed based on what the user is doing in Outlook at any given moment... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: Create an Office shared add-in – building the GUI

I like to tinker with new technologies to see what they can do and how I could potentially use them in the solutions I build for my clients. A lot of the times my tinkering never leads to full understanding of the technology. In such cases, I don't blame myself nor my sometimes fickle love for the latest shiny bits... Read the rest of this entry →

MS Office toolbar and Ribbon UI images style guide

Add-in Express for Office and .net supports several types of images on controls of Microsoft Office applications. These are bmp, png and ico formats. But not all the formats can be used in all versions of Microsoft Office... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: Add-in Express in-place GUI designers (on an example of Outlook add-in)

A key component of any Office add-in is the custom UI you develop for your users. And with Office, your add-in almost always requires a button or two in the Office menu or Ribbon. Add-in Express has long made it easy to build custom menus (aka CommandBars) and Ribbons... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: How to develop Outlook plugin – architecture and programming model

The 2010 version of Add-in Express for Office and .NET will be released soon. As you might expect, the upcoming release will support the significant new features included with Office 2010 while also supporting previous versions of Office (all the way back to Office 2000)... Read the rest of this entry →

Add-in Express 2010 for Office: new GUI designers and the new guy

Firstly, let me introduce myself, I’m Pieter van der Westhuizen, a recent addition to the Add-in Express team and I will be your host on a series of blog posts covering various aspects of the Add-in Express product range. As a keen user of the Add-in Express tools, this is an ideal opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with like-minded users... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Develop Outlook add-in with custom command bars and ribbon tabs (Delphi)

Today we'll develop an add-in for Outlook 2000 - 2007 in Delphi 2009. We are not going to create anything super complex, I will just show you how to work with our visual components at design-time and how it looks in Outlook at run-time... Read the rest of this entry →

How to show an Outlook.MailItem in PrintPreview mode programmatically

The Outlook object model doesn't allow showing the PrintPreview dialog. To show it in all Outlook versions, you need to call the Execute method of a corresponding command bar button. Also, in Outlook 2007 and 2010, you can invoke the corresponding Ribbon command using the ExecuteMso method of the Office.CommandBars class. Let's see how to do this... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Support Office command bars and Ribbon UI in one add-in project (VB.NET)

Add-in Express supports creating COM add-ins for Office 2000 - 2010. Office 2000, XP and 2003 have a traditional command bar-based user interface, while Office 2007 is partially and Office 2010 is fully ribbonized. "How is it possible to support both types of user interfaces in one COM add-in project?" you may ask... Read the rest of this entry →

Just two screenshots

Do not look for this in beta 1! :)... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Resize Advanced Task Pane programmatically (VB.NET)

To resize your custom Office task pane, you need to use the trivial Width and Height properties of the particular instance of your task pane. There is just one important thing - the Splitter property should be set to None... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Intercept clicking on standard Office Ribbon controls (VB.NET)

The answer is very simple indeed - you can use the ADXRibbonCommand component. The main difficulty is that you need to know IDs of standard controls. You can find a list of all available control IDs on the Microsoft web-site (see the link at the end of this post)... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Intercept clicking on Outlook buttons (VSTO)

There is an easy solution: you can use the ADXRibbonCommand component. Basically there is only one thing that may present some difficulties to you - knowing the ID of the standard Control. However, you can visit Microsoft website to find the list of all available control IDs (please see the link below). Everything else is as easy as pie with Add-in Express... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Customize Fluent Ribbon UI in Outlook 2007 Inspectors (VB.NET)

Most of Office 2007 applications have the Fluent Ribbon UI. Today we will explore the most popular methods of customizing this part of the user interface on example of Outlook 2007 Inspectors... Read the rest of this entry →

Video HowTo: Customize Fluent Ribbon UI in Outlook 2007 Inspectors (VSTO)

Most Office 2007 applications have the Fluent Ribbon UI. Today we will have a look at the most frequently used methods of modifying this part of user interface and we’ll take Outlook 2007 Inspectors as an example... Read the rest of this entry →

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