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Adding to Ribbon at run time works once

Hi I'm trying to add the current open contacts phone numbers to a ribbon.
I have created the ribbon and added a SplitButton which will contain the phone numbers.
In 'ThisAddin' when the current explorer changes it triggers an event which simply gets the item type. If its a contact it calls
//ThisAddin.cs on explorer change event - if is contact run:
Globals.Ribbons.CallContact.AddButton(contactItem.BusinessTelephoneNumber);
//Ribbon class
internal void AddButton(string name)
{
if (name != null && name.Count() > 2)
{
RibbonButton item = Globals.Factory.GetRibbonFactory().CreateRibbonButton();
item.Label = name;
item.ShowLabel = true;
this.newSplit.Items.Add(item);
}
}
This works once, first time opening a contact the phone number is displayed in the ribbon. Opening another contact window will cause the ribbon items to be added but are blank and null.
I'm simply trying to add the contacts phone numbers to the ribbon and leave them there while the user can open another contact and the same code runs adding the phone numbers to the ribbon.
I don't need to keep reference to the items once they are added. Thank you for the help. I feel there needs to be an invoke in here somewhere.

You must tell Outlook to refresh the ribbon. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/walkthrough-updating-the-controls-on-a-ribbon-at-run-time?view=vs-2019 for the sample code.
You will need to specify a callback to retrieve the button's caption instead of hard-coding it in the ribbon's XML.
Note that since you can have multiple inspectors open, you must provide data specific to each item opened in its own inspector.

The Ribbon UI is a static thing because it is loaded once at startup (or before the window is shown). The best what you can do is to define callbacks and get them called wherever you need. For example, you can define 'getVisible' callback for your ribbon controls instead of adding new elements at runtime.
The IRibbonUI.Invalidate method invalidates the cached values for all of the controls of the Ribbon user interface.
You can customize the Ribbon UI by using callback procedures in COM add-ins. For each of the callbacks that the add-in implements, the responses are cached.
For example, if an add-in writer implements the getImage callback procedure for a button, the function is called once, the image loads, and then if the image needs to be updated, the cached image is used instead of recalling the procedure. This process remains in place until the add-in signals that the cached values are invalid by using the Invalidate method, at which time, the callback procedure is again called and the return response is cached. The add-in can then force an immediate update of the UI by calling the Refresh method.
<customUI … OnLoad="MyAddinInitialize" …>
Dim MyRibbon As IRibbonUI
Sub MyAddInInitialize(Ribbon As IRibbonUI)
Set MyRibbon = Ribbon
End Sub
Sub myFunction()
MyRibbon.Invalidate() ' Invalidates the caches of all of this add-in's controls
End Sub
The Fluent UI is described in-depth in the following articles:
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)
Also, you may find the Walkthrough: Create a custom tab by using Ribbon XML helpful. Note, you can export an existing custom ribbon UI to the XML and continue dealing with a raw markup.

Multiple forms one windows C# possible or only panels/usercontrol?

So here's my Question, I'm new to C#(teaching my self at that) Here's the thing, I'm working on a basic sim game, nothing to complex but I've got the design and basic functions done.
However In order to implement it, I'm currently using multiple Forms(Visual Studio 2013)
I have my "main" form which has the "action" buttons to it
So when i want to go to a user Profile page I have
Btn_profileview Click(object sender, EventArgs e){
Form profile = new Form();
profile.Show();
}
The User would then implement the changes(for instance change name) which is written to a text file, for use in other areas of the program.
However It opens a new windows, I've tried modal and nonmodal windows and while the benefit of Modal so they have to actual close the window solves the issue, i'd rather have it just overwrite the preexisting Form, and then on close go back to the "main" screen without actually using multiple windows.
Now I was told UserControl and/or Panel would solve the issue, but it would cause a complete redesign moving from the multiple forms to the multiple panel screens and figuring out how to get those to work(Visible and Invisible), i'm assuming it wouldn't be extremely difficult something along the lines of Panel"name".show(); and panel"name".close();
But would it be possible to actually add a line of code to the pre-existing code(so as not to cause a complete reesign) or are Panels and UserControl the only real way to implement within 1 continuous windows?

paqogomez is right: There are many ways to do it.
Here is one that combines a lot of the pros:
You create an invisible Tab on your window with as many pages as you need. Place a Panel on each tab and create all your controls on of them. This does not mean that you have to do it all over - you can move and drop the controls you already have without much hassle. Of course you need to turn off docking and maybe anchors, but other than that this is a simple process.
If you have controls on the 2nd form with the same name, these names should be changed to something unique though. I hope all Controls have proper names already, but especially Labels get neglected, at least here.. (With a little luck you can even use cut and paste to get Controls from another form to panel2!)
The big pro of this trick is that you can do all work in the designer of the same form. The Tab control serves only as a container where you keep your panels without adding to the UI and without giving the user control of what is shown.
Next you create one Panel variable in your main form:
Panel currentPanel;
On Load you assign the first 'real' Panel to it like this:
currentPanel = panel1;
this.Controls.Add(currentPanel);
Later, each time you want to switch, you re-assign the panels you need like this:
this.Controls.Remove(currentPanel);
currentPanel = panel2; // or whichever panel you want to show..
this.Controls.Add(currentPanel );
If your real panels are docked to fill the tabpage, as they should, the currentPanel will fill the form. You still have access to each panel and to each control by their names at any time but you see no overhead of tabs and your form never changes, except for the full content.

Dock Windows Forms (tabbed chat interface)

Edit for those who say to use tab control
I would love to use a tab control; yet i have no idea how to go about linking the tab control up from the main form. I would assume that I would have to do something like this:
Create Form with a blank TabControl on it, no pages created.
Create a CustomuserControl (Add -> user Control), with my controls on it.
When a new chat comes in, create a tab control Item, Tab Control Page, add the Custom Control to the Tab Control Page. Add the tab control handle to the hash table, so that when new messages come in, they can be referenced in the proper control.
But, i am so not sure how to do this. For example, I know that I can create custom events inside of the User Control, so that, for example, if each control has a 'bold' button, i can each page that has that control on it, to actually USE the button.
Yet i also need to register message callbacks, so that I can use a MessageGrabber to send data to it, and tha'ts not assigned inside of the UserControl, that's assigned programatically when a new window comes in; but since I have no controls to reference, i can't assign.
KISS Philosophy
Wouldn't it be easier to just create the form, like i do now, and then just dock that form within a window or something? So that, in essence, it's still creating the form, but it's also a separate window?
Original Question
Okay, so i'm stumped (which isn't that big of a surprise when it comes to complex C# logic lol)! What i'm trying to do is the following:
Goal: Setup tabbed chatting for new chat application.
Completed: Open new window whenever a chat message is received, or a user requests a new chat from the roster. This is working perfectly, and opens only a window when the user doesn't already have the chat open. Nice and happy there.
Problem: I dont want windows. Well, i do want A window, but, i do not want tons of separate windows. For example, our Customer Service team may have about 10 active IM windows going at one time, i do not want them to have to have 10 windows tiled there lol. I'd rather they have a single Private IM window, and all 10 tabs docked within the window.
Logic: This is my logic here, which may be flawed, i do apologize:
OnMessage: Open new chat window if one doesn't already exist; if one exists, open it as a tab within the current chat window.
SendMessage: ^^ ditto ^^
Code Examples:
if (!Util.ChatForms.ContainsKey(msg.From.Bare))
{
RosterNode rn = rosterControl1.GetRosterItem(msg.From);
string nick = msg.From.Bare;
if (rn != null)
nick = rn.Text;
frmChat f = new frmChat(msg.From, xmpp, nick);
f.Show();
f.IncomingMessage(msg);
return;
}
Note on above: The Util. function just keeps tracks of what windows are opened inside of a hashtable, that way, when messages come in, they route to the proper window. That is added with the:
Util.ChatForms.Add(m_Jid.Bare.ToLower(), this);
Command in the frmChat() form.
Library in Use: agsxmpp from: http://www.ag-software.de/agsxmpp-sdk/download/
Problem:
How can i convert this code to open inside of tabs, instead of windows? Can someone please give me some ideas, and help with that. I just can't seem to wrap my head around that concept.

Use TabControl

Silverlight business application initialize check

I am using the Business Silverlight application. I have incorporated some MVVM into this and were off an running with it. We are using some telerik controls, mostly the ribbon control and the docking. We register all the telerik ribbon controls in the about.xaml.cs file, the method is DisplayUI - its here where we register the docking control then we register the ribbon after this. What happens is that when you click the ABOUT link it shows our first tab with buttons(perfect). when you click the HOME link next to the ABOUT link, we go back to the home page..but when you click the ABOUT link again it registers the controls again so we end up with two tabs that are the same.
Is there a way to check to see if this about.xaml.cs file has already been initialized? Im guessing that is has a handle on the first call in memory as I am able to see the first tabs rendering..
Thanks
here is the about code
public About()
{
InitializeComponent();
DisplayUI();
this.Title = ApplicationStrings.AboutPageTitle;
}
that display UI does all the work in registering the dockpanel and the ribbons. We'd like to not have the DisplayUI() called if this has already been rendered once.

If you do it by event handler can you unsubscribe from the event at the end of the method? Without seeing some code it's hard to work out what to change.
It's not the nicest way of doing it, but if this code needs to run once and only once then you could have a static boolean variable on the class set to false and when you call DisplayUI you check the value of this. If it's false you set it to true and run the method, and if it's true you just return.

Removing a Control from a Form

So I've got some serious problems with removing a Control from a Form of my application. It's kinda messed up but I can't change anything. I have a form and I have a separated user Control. The control opens an exe file and shows a progress bar while loading it's bytes. And here comes the problem. I do all of it with a BackgroundWorker and when the worker_DoWorkerCompleted method is called the original form should show a MessageBox and remove the Control.
BackGround_Loader bgLoad = new BackGround_Loader();
bgLoad.Location = new Point(this.Width/2 - bgLoad.Width/2, this.Height/2 - bgLoad.Height/2);
this.Controls.Add(bgLoad);
bgLoad.BringToFront();
bgLoad.AddReferences(this.executableFile, this.SourceReader);
bgLoad.occuredEvent();
At first I set the control's location to be in the middle of the Form itself. Then I add the control to the form, and bring it to the front. After these I send the path of the executable and a RichTextBox's reference to this. With the occuredEvent I start the BackgroundWorker itself. And here comes my problem. I should show a MessageBox in the Form when the in the bgLoad the backgroundworker gets to the DoWorkerCompleted status. Kindly I have no idea how to do it. It works just perfect however the control stays in the middle of the form.

UI actions must be performed on the main UI thread. The events that get raised from the background worker thread are (obviously) in a different thread.
You need something like the following code:
private void backgroundWorker_DoWork(object sender, AlbumInfoEventArgs e)
{
// Check with an element on the form whether this is a cross thread call
if (dataGridView.InvokeRequired)
{
dataGridView.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate { AddToGrid(e.AlbumInfo); });
}
else
{
AddToGrid(e.AlbumInfo);
}
}
In this case AddToGrid is my method for adding a row to a DataGridView, but in your case it will be a method that does what you need to do.
Similarly for the backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted method
See this MSDN example

I could find a way to solve the problem but I don't really like it. In the addReferences method I pass the Form itself and an object of the bgLoad class. Then in the RunWorkerCompleted I check if the control is on the form and if it is then I remove it.
bgLoad.AddReferences(this, bgLoad, this.executableFile, this.SourceReader);
...
private void worker_DoWorkerCompleted(object sender, DoWorkerEventArgs e) {
if(this.MainForm.Controls.Contains(this.Control) {
this.MainForm.Controls.Remove(this.Control);
}
}
Like this it works but it's awful for me.