I am trying to access the ribbon of Microsoft office word file using C#. and trying to change its visibility inside a background worker. Please help
By design, this is not possible. An Office Ribbon can only be controlled from code running in-process in the host Office application. What's more, the Ribbon definition must be part of the "container" of the code that's should affect the Ribbon.
This was a conscious and desired design decision by Microsoft after the experiences it has with the Ribbon predecessor - the CommandBars object model.
Related
I have created a C# VSTO add-in with Visual Studio 2019 that receives commands from a socket connection and it can insert text, modify buttons only in my ribbon using office Interop.
I want to know two things.
How can I get the name of all the ribbons (Home, Insert, Design,
....) programmatically?
Initiate a mouse click (for example click Bold button in the Home tab) on any other ribbons than the one I created.
For the 2nd question, I want to use office add-in only, not by simulating keypress/mouse event.
How can I get the name of all the ribbons (Home, Insert, Design, ....) programmatically?
There is no trivial way for getting this job done. You can try using Accessibility API. Microsoft Active Accessibility is a Component Object Model (COM)-based technology that improves the way accessibility aids work with applications running on Microsoft Windows. It provides dynamic-link libraries that are incorporated into the operating system as well as a COM interface and API elements that provide reliable methods for exposing information about UI elements.
Initiate a mouse click (for example click Bold button in the Home tab) on any other ribbons than the one I created.
You can use the CommandBars.ExecuteMso method which executes the control identified by the idMso parameter. This method is useful in cases where there is no object model for a particular command. Works on controls that are built-in buttons, toggleButtons, and splitButtons. On failure, it returns E_InvalidArg for an invalid idMso, and E_Fail for controls that are not enabled or not visible.
Application.CommandBars.ExecuteMso("Copy")
Accessibility API (as Eugene mentioned) is pretty much the only way to drive Outlook Ribbon and its controls. Keep in mind that since Microsoft has never documented the controls and their ids, they are subject to change between the versions.
If using Redemption (I am its author) is an option, it exposes SafeExplorer and SafeInspector objects that expose the ribbon and its controls using Accessibility and low level Windows API.
Redemption.SafeExplorer sExplorer = new Redemption.SafeExplorer();
sExplorer.Item = OutlookApplication.ActiveExplorer;
foreach (var tab in sExplorer.Ribbon.Tabs)
{
MessageBox.Show(tab);
}
I'm totally newbie in Office Add in Development.
Started few hours ago :)
Office version: 2016
I would like to create an add-in, with a button that will allow me to synchronize my email with my custom program and "flag" it to avoid a new synchronization in the future.
For that, it would be necessary to:
add a button (it seems simple to me, but by following this link, I did not manage to see the button when debugging in Outlook)
I would like the button is present in the ribbon that appears when you open an email, and only down (it would prevent a synchronization of several emails at once) - and I can not find the name of the adequate control. There is a list of Excel files (here) but which corresponds to the one of the opening of the mail message?
perform any action when the user clicks the button - I guess that's a simple event of the button, but how can I get the opened message data and metadata (sender, to, cc, subject ...)
"flag" the email, so as to avoid a second synchronization. The ideal is to add an icon to the email in the list of emails, as is done for an email containing attachments etc ...
I know I'm asking a lot, but I'm not asking to get the job done, just to be able to steer in the right direction. So if you have tutorials, articles etc ... to help me, it would be great.
Thank you
N.B.: Copy of this question has been posted in VSTO forum here
To create a custom ribbon UI, VSTO provides two possible ways:
Walkthrough: Create a custom tab by using the Ribbon Designer
Walkthrough: Create a custom tab by using Ribbon XML
To keep a separate state for the control for each inspector window separately you need to implement ribbon callbacks and call the Invalidate or InvalidateControl methods of the IRibbonUI interface. Read more about these methods in the following articles:
OfficeTalk: Display and Hide Tabs, Groups, and Controls on the Microsoft Office Ribbon User Interface (Part 1 of 2)
OfficeTalk: Display and Hide Tabs, Groups, and Controls on the Microsoft Office Ribbon User Interface (Part 2 of 2)
The Fluent UI (aka Ribbon UI) is described in depth:
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 1 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 2 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 3 of 3)
Is it possible to handle button click events on a custom ribbon button from another application using interop?
So if I've created a Word 2010 application add-in which creates a custom tab with several buttons and then I instantiate a Word application from a C# win forms application using interop, how would I then go about wiring up to the button click events on my custom ribbon from the win forms app? With Word 2003 I could access the buttons through the CommandBars collection and then simply wire up to the click event.
After some further reading, I guess what I'm trying to do is find out how to get access to the Ribbon object model using interop. Is this possible?
[Edit]
For anyone that's interested. When I wrote this question I knew of another way to solve my problem, but it means a lot of extra work changing my existing implementation to upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2010, and so I was hoping there would be away to access the Ribbon object model outside of a VSTO add-in.
My solution is to use an IpcChannel to make calls from the vsto add-in to my win-forms application. So my win-forms application initialises the Word instance and then opens up a server channel. In the vsto add-in I handle Application.DocumentOpen and if the document is owned by my application I open a client channel to my application. I can then make calls back to my win-forms app from the vsto add-in through the use of shared interfaces.
While this technique works, it does have some draw backs. If the calls through the ipc channel are synchronous then my application can't touch the word object because a deadlock occurs. Making asynchronous calls introduces other problems, but I found that I could block the Word window with a modal dialog without ending up deadlocked.
While this isn't an exact answer to my original question, it is an alternative and so I thought I would share this with anyone else having this problem.
If anyone does know how to access the Ribbon object model outside of VSTO I would still be interested to know how.
Edit: I finally discovered a code.msdn.microsoft.com project that incorporates native C# ribbon manipulation. Use that instead of any VBA business.
Original Post:
You don't need VSTO to access the ribbon programmatically. Visit Word Articles for a brief Word VBA example.
I'm certain there's a way to accomplish the same in C#, but I have yet to implement one. If I find one, I will be certain to share. (I previously contributed an answer that contains a C#-VBA workaround.)
I am currently diving into VSTO add-in development and ribbon customization for Word 2010. This works fine, but has a drawback: The ribbon customization should take place for only certain documents, but the IRibbonExtensibility.GetCustomUI() method is obviously called on application startup before any document is loaded. How can I accomplish this requirement?
You're right that it's only called once. About your only choice (and what's worked for me reasonably well), is to define EVERYTHING in your ribbon up front, then set the VISIBLE property to false or true as applicable depending on what doc is loaded, or whatever else is happening in your addin.
#drventure is right, you have to define your ribbon up front, then show/hide different buttons on the ribbon.
What might help you though is some of the features in a project I have been working on, VSTO Contrib, it allows you to create a ViewModel, which will be created for each open document, and it will discover and wire up the ribbon xml by convention.
In your case this would mean you can bind the ribbon buttons visibility to a property on the viewmodel, and you don't have to worry about keeping the window/documents syncronised. Have a read of http://jake.ginnivan.net/vsto-contrib/ribbon-factory and see if it will help you solve your problem with a heap less code =)
I'm trying to dynamically customize the built-in Ribbon Controls on an Office2007 ribbon by adding C# objects such as RibbonTab, RibbonGroup, RibbonControl to the Ribbon. I have been unsuccessfull in disabeling any existing built-in controls, however I can add my own group. Now i'm thinking that disabling or hiding existing ones not be possible.
If anyone been able to hide a built-in control using code or the designer using .NET VSTO Office 2007 development, can you please post the code you used?
Thanks!
Here is a Stackoverflow question that talks about overriding built-in ribbon commands. Here is an MSDN video that shows it as well.