Microsoft Office 2010 (Beta) has come with a nice new feature that allows any earthling to change the looks of his or her user interface, aka, the Ribbon. When Microsoft Office 2007 came into existance, changing the user interface meant getting one's hands dirty in XML code. In Office 2010 things changed for the better, although you still need XML for a more professionally looking customization.

Here’s how this new feature looks like:

Figure 1: Microsoft Office 2010 Ribbon Customization

This looks great and certainly makes life much easier when it comes to customizing the user interface. However, I think that this adds layers to our task. An alternative would be to add an option to the right-click such that we could easily remove a tab, group or button. Also, there should be a button to reset the Ribbon from the same right-click. Here’s how my Ribbon Customization idea would look like:

Figure 2: Remove/Reset Ribbon button straight from the right-click

Sometimes, we have a very large document in Microsoft Word and need to move sections of the document around. In order to move such document sections, people often copy and paste. However, this is inneficient when dealing with large documents.

Here's a video a made explaining how to handle that (URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArfgwtAzx74):

For many people out there, who have written AddIns for Excel using VB6, they find themselves with a dilemma: how do I add my custom toolbar to another Ribbon tab?

Well, I honestly do not have an answer to that question; however, we can still customize the Ribbon and move this Custom Toolbar to another location. To be specific, we can move it to the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar).

First off, you need to add your custom toolbar. You can use VBA to add this custom toolbar as follows:

Sub test()
    Dim cmdBar As CommandBar
    Dim btn As CommandBarButton

    On Error Resume Next
    Application.CommandBars("Testing").Delete()
    cmdBar = Application.CommandBars.Add
    cmdBar.Name = "Testing"
    cmdBar.Visible = True

    btn = cmdBar.Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)

    With btn
        .Style = msoButtonIconAndCaption
        .FaceId = 986
        .Caption = "Robert Martim"
    End With
End Sub

The above code will add the following to the Add-Ins tab:

Now, you create your other Excel document where you wish to add the GroupAddInsCustomToolbars to it. Open this Excel document using the custom UI Editor where the following XML must be inserted:

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"

      xmlns:mso="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui">

      <ribbon startFromScratch="true">

       <qat>

        <documentControls>

         <mso:control idQ="mso:GroupAddInsCustomToolbars" visible="true"/>

        </documentControls>

       </qat>

      </ribbon>

</customUI>

The GroupAddInsCustomToolbars is placed under the mso namespace; therefore we must refer to it and then get the idQ for it. Remember that GroupAddInsCustomToolbars is not a group per se, but a control (it is a commandbar control). Hence, if you try to place it under a tab, it fails since it cannot find the group.

Also, remember that to customize the QAT you must start from scratch. The final result is:

In a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGjqDGF7xaM) published on YouTube back in 2008, I explained how to highlight the active row in Excel. In this brief article, I discuss how you can highlight the active cell in Excel. In this particular case, I will only change the font color of the cell, but you can later change the conditional formatting and apply whatever formatting you wish.

Here's how it is done:

1. Create a named range called AddressOfActiveCell using the formula: =ADDRESS(5,6)
2. Select the entire worksheet and apply a conditional formatting using the formula (the active cell being A1 upon selection): =ADDRESS(ROW(A1),COLUMN(A1))=AddressOfActiveCell
3. Now, open the visual basic editor and insert the following code:


Private Sub Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)

    With ThisWorkbook.Names("AddressOfActiveCell")
        .Name = "AddressOfActiveCell"
        .RefersToR1C1 = "=address(" & ActiveCell.Row & "," & ActiveCell.Column & ")"
    End With

End Sub

Check the video tutorial here: