Ribbon buttons from custom template not sticking to Quick Access Toolbar

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Mike McGavin - 17 Jun 2008 04:32 GMT

Hello. I hope this is an appropriate newsgroup.

I've developed a couple of extensions to Word 2007 within my
organisation, which customize the Word 2007 ribbon. One of the
extensions is a COM addin, which adds a button that runs some C#.Net
code. The other extension is a Word Template (which we position in
Word's STARTUP folder), and adds 4 buttons to the same group as the
first extension, all of which cause VBA code to run if they're
clicked.

As both extensions add their buttons to the same group, it appears
visually to the user as if it's just 5 buttons in a single group on
the Home Tab, even though they come from two different sources and
work quite differently behind the scenes.

Until now this has seemed to work fine, but I just encountered a user
in our organisation who's been trying to add the individual buttons to
the Quick Access Toolbar by right-clicking the buttons, and choosing
the Add to Quick Access Toolbar button. The button which originates
from the COM addin will add to the QAT without problems. When trying
to add any of the buttons which originate from the template, however,
the buttons do not *stick* to the QAT, and they're no longer there
once Word has been shut down and re-started.

This seems like a possible bug to me unless it's just something stupid
that I've done, but would anyone happen to know if it's a known bug?
(I've had a look around but haven't found anything obvious.)
Furthermore, can anyone reproduce it or can anyone see if I've missed
anything obvious or suggest a workaround to get it to work?

I've noticed that if I add the entire group to the QAT, then the group
will stick there (as a drop-down button) after Word's closed and re-
opened, but the individual buttons don't.

Thanks for any help or suggestions with this.
Mike.

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Mike McGavin - 24 Jun 2008 00:06 GMT

Hi again.

> Until now this has seemed to work fine, but I just encountered a user
> in our organisation who's been trying to add the individual buttons to
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> the buttons do not *stick* to the QAT, and they're no longer there
> once Word has been shut down and re-started.

I've been narrowing this problem down further, but unfortunately not
in any way that seems useful for actually fixing it. I think the only
reason I was able to add the group (but not the buttons) to the Quick
Access Toolbar without issues was because the group was also defined
within my COM addin (both definitions were merged through being
defined within the same namespace), and so was being treated by Word
in that respect.

I experimented with adding a second group that was *only* defined
within my STARTUP template, and that group *wouldn't* stick to the
Quick Access Toolbar when I added it. What I did notice, however, was
that if I opened the template directly in Word, added the group (or
any button) to the Quick Access Toolbar, then closed the template,
Word would prompt me to save the changes.

In other words, it seems that if Ribbon controls are definied within a
template in Word's STARTUP folder, then Word 2007 wants to save
details about those buttons' presence in the Quick Access Toolbar
within the same template that defines them. This is bad for us,
because we really want to leave that template in a read-only location
for our users, and overwrite it with updates from time to time.
Furthermore, even when I had write access to the template, Word didn't
prompt me to save the changes unless I specifically had the template
open by navigating to that location and opening it. So if it was just
open as a consequence of being in the STARTUP folder, any changes I
made to that template's buttons displaying on the Quick Access Toolbar
would disappear as soon as I closed Word, even if write access was
available.

Is there some way we can re-configure Word so that details about Quick
Access Toolbar references are all stored somewhere in a user's
profile, such as the Normal.dotm template? I'd have thought that this
would have been the logical place for such preferences from the
beginning.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
Mike.

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