Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar icons?

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

zoso,

If you've created these custom button icons using the Button Editor then I believe they get saved to a file named excel.xlb (as well as any other customizations you've made to your excel toolbars) that should be located in the folders below based on your OS:

For Windows NT they can be found in:
C:\WINNT\Profiles\(user ID)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

For Windows 2000 they can be found in:
C:\Documents and Settings\(user ID)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

For Windows 98 & 95 it can be found in:
C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

I'm not sure where it would be for Win2k3. Once you've got your toolbars set as you like them make a copy of the excel.xlb file and store it in a safe place (same goes for xlusrgal.xls if you have any user-defined charts that you want to save between Office installations/updates. Also normal.dot for Word toolbar customizations). Then when you install/update Office, make some changes to your toolbars and close the application and then search your C drive to find where the above mentioned files are being stored and then replace them with your saved files.


HTH,

BTA

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

Hi, I havent needed to do this but by what your saying custom icons arent retained when you reinstall. How about copying all your custom icons into your own custom toolbar. See 'Create a custom toolbar' in Excel help. Save your workbook with the custom toolbar locked into place and then see what happens when you open the workbook on another PC. That should be proof of a backup.

My understanding is that icons in a custom toolbar will work on other machines so this should then work after reinstalling. I believe Excel stores custom menus with an XLB extension in the Windows folder so you could copy this file as a backup as well but it may not be enough as theres probably a registry setting somewhere.

Other things to think about as a backup are your pesonal.xls file, templates (XLT) and Addins (XLA) files.

In regards to using other icons they are called FaceID's which can be amended only by using code. I dont think there are FaceID's for Excels built-in icons that you can use. See John Walkenbach's site for info on custom toolbars via code including faceids.

hth

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

Guys

Thanks a lot for your response & help!

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

btadams said:

For Windows NT they can be found in:
C:\WINNT\Profiles\(user ID)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

Click to expand...

On my NT4.0 the .XLB is stored in C:\WINNT
and is named by my loginname8.XLB
I assume the 8 is the xl version (97) therefore my custome toolbar is in

c:\winnt\bob8.xlb


EDIT:

As an afterthought, does anyone know if the .xlb file from 97 will work with newer verisions? If so, I MAY begin to consider becoming part of the current world...

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

Bob,

I have taken the *.xlb file created using Excel 97 from a WinNT pc and transferred it to a W2K pc with Excel 2K and it seems to be working fine.

Re: Is there a way of saving/restoring customised toolbar ic

Thanks for that! One less worry about upgrading if the time ever comes.