Can a ribbon be resized or have two rows of buttons?

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Charlie Mac - 06 Jun 2007 20:18 GMT

Gerus,

I developed a toolbar in Word 2003 with 25 buttons. When it is placed
in Word 2007, it produces a mile-long ribbon and the user has to click
the right/left arrows to view the other half of the ribbon. Is their
a way to make the ribbon vertical like the old-style toolbars? Can a
custom ribbon be resized to contain multiple rows? Any suggestions
would be appreciated. Is their a way to resize the ribbon to remove
the wasted space below the buttons? Thanks.

Take care,

Charlie from Texas

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Jay Freedman - 06 Jun 2007 23:53 GMT

Hi Charlie,

You really can't do much with/to the ribbon unless you get into the
XML. Have a look at http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribbonx/index.php.

You might be able to do what you want with one of the products
discussed at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CustomizeRibbon.htm, but I
don't know how either of them handles lots of buttons.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

>Gerus,
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
>Charlie from Texas

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Charlie Mac - 13 Jun 2007 19:38 GMT

Jay,

Thanks for your reply. I have been to the sites, but I don't see how
to get into the XML and I don't want a third-party utility to add to
my installation woes. I will try to replace the buttons on my toolbar
with icons - I have not done that before.... My app uses VBA in the
normal.dot or normal dotm (for autorun) and another .dot in the START
folder plus a VB 2005 app and a database. I don't know how to make
an MSI file...so my install routine is the pits.
Whine...whine...whine....

Take care,

Charlie in Texas
On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:53:00 -0400, Jay Freedman
<jay.freedman@verizon.net> wrote:

>Hi Charlie,
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CustomizeRibbon.htm, but I
>don't know how either of them handles lots of buttons.

Reply to this Message

Cindy M. - 15 Jun 2007 08:49 GMT

Hi Charlie,

> I have been to the sites, but I don't see how
> to get into the XML and I don't want a third-party utility to add to
> my installation woes. I will try to replace the buttons on my toolbar
> with icons - I have not done that before....

The add-in provided by Patrick Schmid wouldn't have to be installed on
anyone's machine. You could use it on your developer machine to
customize the Ribbon directly (create your own tab or tabs) in the
template you put in the user's Startup folder (display works on the same
principles as toolbars in earlier versions).

You get into the XML by changing the file extension to ZIP then
unzipping the file. Here's the MSDN site about working with the Ribbon.
The "Customization" article by Ken Getz, in three parts, contains a lot
of useful information, including how to edit the Ribbon "manually".

> plus a VB 2005 app and a database

Looking beyond the immediate future, you might want to consider a VSTO
2005 SE add-in (free download that will install into Visual Studio Pro
and above). That will let you work with the Ribbon AND custom task panes
"on-the-fly".

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question
or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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Charlie Mac - 18 Jun 2007 17:25 GMT

Cindy,

Thank you for your reply. I will start on this today. Thanks again.

Take care,

Charlie from Texas

>Hi Charlie,
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
>This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question
>or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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