Customizing the Microsoft Office Fluent Ribbon

With the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007, the interface of Office changed significantly with the new RibbonX, RibbonUI, "Fluent Ribbon," or "Fluent UI." Many dislike the change because it was not the same familiar interface. However, the new "Fluent" ribbon (officially named by Microsoft) offers much more control and powerful programming capability. The drawback is having to know Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to program the functionality of controls. However, even if you don't know VBA, you might be able to learn a few methods if you follow the tutorials on this site.

Use the navigation menu on the right to learn more about each topic.

Objectives

This website will provide tips for beginners on how to customize your Ribbon UI.

  • Modify the CustomUI.xml to customize your RibbonUI.
  • Execute macros with ribbon buttons.
  • Write callbacks with VBA scripts.
  • Customize by walk-through examples with buttons, checkBoxes, editBoxes, dropDowns, and galleries.

Requirements

  • Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2010
  • Office 2007 Custom UI Editor - although not absolutely necessary, it will make it much easier to modify customui.xml.
  • Some knowledge of VBA and writing macros.

I will show you two methods of modifying the RibbonUI. First is completely manual. The second is with the Office 2007 Custom UI Editor.