Questions about the Ribbon please

[FenceFurniture]

G'day, I haven't had the need for an Excel forum for many years, but I'm just changing my computer, OpSys and Excel version.
Nine year old Dell becomes new Toshiba,
XP directly to Win 10,
Excel 2003 directly to 2016.
So no previous experience whatsoever with the ribbon before two days ago.

Things are a bit different these days

I had many customised toolbars that I have coded, but of course I've forgotten a great deal of how that happened.

So, directly to some questions please, and all to do with customising the Ribbon (apparently I'm one of the few that like it - I see much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Net).

I have created a custom Tab with ~6 Groups.

1. I'm finding that some of the buttons on two of the Groups keep dropping off. For example, I have just added Thick Outside Borders to the Borders group, and when I went back to the sheet the Ribbon is showing it. As soon as I go to customise the Ribbon again it has disappeared from the list (in the Cust window). It's driving me *******s.

I still don't know why I CANNOT get the Paste Special button to stick. Every time I add it, it is there when I go back to the sheet. The very next time I modify the ribbon (even to move a button up, and then down again (so no change), then PFFFFFT .....PS is gone again. For Thick Borders and No Borders I can work around with a macro, but.......

2. Do I really have to go through the rigmarole of the Custom UI Editor to import my own icons? It seems very long winded compared to the old Button Editor in 2003 where I could make my own icons on the spot for each button. Surely there must be a way to copy & paste icons into the folder that they reside in? What is this folder name?

I have read and digested Debra Dalgleish's instructions on creating user modified buttons, but she is only talking about within an individual workbook. I want to modify some buttons on the general ribbon to stay there permanently. Where are the buttons for Excel in general kept?

As I understand it, I have to edit the code for the existing button in Custom UI Editor (which I have downloaded) but I don't know which file to open.

3. Do button icons HAVE to be .png? Or will .ico work? I use Liquidicon on my 03 machine to create .ico and then have to convert them to .png (can't save them as .png). Just one more step I'd like to eliminate if possible.

4. Is there a MUCH larger selection of buttons available (within Win 10)? There are only 180 in the button selection window, but there are clearly hundreds in use for the default ribbon.

5. It seems that LiquidIcon won't work for Win 10 - anyone know if that's true? If so what do people use to create icons pixel by pixel for Win 10?

I'm reading a helluva lot of stuff but it's over my head unfortunately.

Thanks for any help offered

 

[RickXL]

Hi,

I am not sure that I can answer all your questions but I can make a start.

You are right that things are more complicated now. I think MS must have set up a large team to look at this "problem". Consequently the solution is quite complex.

It would seem that MS expect you to use Visual Studio to perform your Office development. Obviously, not everyone has the same idea. All the VBA user for one group of people. CustomUI seems to have been developed by someone else who does not share the MS view.

Disappearing items: I am not sure how you are making your changes but you can't actually change any default options. What you need to do is create a new group or tab, replicate all th items you want to keep and add your new ones. You can then "remove" the default one. It actually just hides it and you need to "reset" to get it back. I bet you lose all your other changes as well. This looks like quite a useful article: https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#__replace_a_default_2

You can look inside .xlsx and .xlsm workbooks by using a zip compression program. That will show you the internal folder structure. In there are the .xml files and the custom image files. Those images are not added to the standard image list as far as I know. Even if you manually import an image you still need to match names and add some relationships. CustomUI does that for you without needing either a zip program or an xml editor. So it does seem to be the simpler solution.

As far as I know they have to be .png files. The best way to see would be to try adding another type.

I tend to use GIMP for image stuff these days. It is free but there is quite a learning curve. I usually manage to beat it into submission eventually. I bet Paint still works as well. It is suggested here ( http://blog.contextures.com/archives/2014/10/02/add-your-own-icon-to-an-excel-custom-ribbon-tab/ ) that 256 * 256 is the upper size limit but I have not checked.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

 

[FenceFurniture]

Thanks Rick.