Excel Ribbon Custom Add-in tab - excel

We have an excel add-in that has generated it's own tab (for years - since at least Excel 2007) and put it's icons in place -
But now we are trying to make it work with Excel 2016 and have into a strange one
Instead of putting it in out custom tab named 'ourTabName" and putting in large icons, it is installing in a tab called "Add-ins" and using small icons.
Does anyone know if something changed with 2016, and how we fix this?

Related

CustomUI ribbon customization disappears on save?

I've created an Excel workbook for a client of mine which uses a custom ribbon tab to access the VBA functionality. It thus contains a customUI.xml file with the extra ribbon code in it (by using the Custom UI Editor tool). By now, all was working well for over a year.
However, a few days ago the ribbon customizations keep disappearing after he makes a simple modification to the file and saves it again. Nothing fancy; just change some cell values and ctrl-s save. When opening the saved version the ribbon doesn't show up, and on closer inspection it turns out the ribbon customization is completely gone from the file at that point (the entire root customUI folder is gone and the reference to it from the _rels.rels file is gone too). He's just a regular Excel user, so he doesn't even know about Office custom UI ribbon xmls etc, so it's not that he has been messing with tools he shouldn't have messed with. When I open a working copy of the file on my machine and save it, the ribbon remains in place.
The VBA is still intact though, and the listobject tables that are placed on some sheets are still there too, so it can't be because it got intermediately saved in 2003 format or such...
The file does live in a Sharepoint and OneDrive environment, but IIRC he also had this problem when retrieving a working backup of the file, placing it on his desktop and making a modification from there. Then again a few months ago his IT administrator has moved his company over to Office 356 and migrated his files to the cloud, so it might well be his desktop is on OneDrive too.
What could cause a perfectly fine ribbon to disappear like that? A rogue Office update? Or some Sharepoint 'security' feature to remove ribbons on save? (note that I'm not well known with Sharepoint so this is just wild speculation.) He's using Office 365, so I presume he's on Excel 2019 (as am I).
All leads are welcome, because I'm at a total loss here...

Cant have a Excel Add in as a separate tab from an enabled COM Add in

Currently I have an Excel Add In in Excel 2016 called 'Excel Image Assistant' (https://excel-image-assistant.com/). This is an excel add-in currently enabled on my excel and appears under a tab on the ribbon as Add-Ins.
I have developed a VSTO Add In which I want to install on my machine and enable this personalized bespoke ribbon. It installs perfectly fine, however when I enable this COM add in. The items from the excel add in now appears in my COM ADD IN ribbon.
I want to treat these as two different tabs but it seems as though the excel add in is conflicting with the VSTO COM Add In.
So you can only have one or the other enabled to see the add in Excel but if you have both enabled the Excel Add in is put in my COM add in.
Is this in the VSTO Code that could be causing this? Or this is something in Excel settings wise that may need to be adjusted to allow both of these to be enabled as different tabs in the ribbon as i need them treated seperately.

Recovering datas from an Excel/ActiveX spreadsheet

I'm having the following issue: I've an Excel spreadsheet with a lot of VBA codes and ActiveX controls, including RExcel formulas.
The Excel version is 2007.
When I try to open this file, Task Manager says Excel isn't answering and something starts like if Excel started running endless codes; I deactivated each control and it still seems broken.
I would like to recover at least some formulas I've written in that spreadsheet, but this is actually impossible by opening the spreadsheet in conventional way.
Could you tell me how I can "read" formulas and text in that spreadsheet without opening it by Excel?
Thanks,
Indeed have calculation set to manual for a start.
Now set your security settings such that macros and activeX are disabled:
Excel Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings... > Macro Settings > Disable all macros with notification
For ActiveX I am not sure if there is a menu in excel-2007 like for macros, but if there is make sure it is set to not run as well.
Now you can open your excel workbook and it will not run your macro's and shouldn't auto calculate or update!
ADDED: I have had something like this in the past and this is what worked in 1 occasion: install an other office excel application, like open office (the calc application has the excel functionality) and see if it opens in that application. Then if it does, save the file (under another file name) and close it. Open the new file under MS Office Excel, and see what is still recoverable.
Good luck!
use a tool like 7zip to extract the files. the sheets/formulas are in the .xml
the code in a macro enabled spreadsheet is in a .bin file
this can be read with MalOfficeScanner

VBA control over the ribbon?

I am in the process of creating a VBA add-in for Excel 2010, and I used the "Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office" tool to create my own ribbon.
However, I would like to give the user the option to load my add-in without displaying the ribbon, or with different parts of the ribbon visible.
With menus, I know you can completely control them programmatically, but ribbons seem to work differently.
Is there a way in VBA to not load my customUI.xml ribbon tabs on startup?
Is there a way to remove items from (or add items to) these tabs at runtime?
here is a whole slew of help on this subject Awesome Ribbon Help. I think points 2 and 3 are of particular interest to you.

VBA created with Excel 2003 loaded OK in Excel 2007, but there's nothing in Project tree of VB editor

I have created a VBA in excel 2003 and save it in xla format. This AddIn add a new menu and some submenu in toolbar of Excel. All work well until I upgrade to Office 2007, then I open the xla file. No error message shown, but when I view the macro List, no items there. I open the Visual Basic editor. My old Project (named ML) is still there, but nothing in the Project tree, just default files as when add a new blank project.
I open the xla file with notepad, and my variable, function name are still there. Anyone has experience in this weird behavior, please give me a clue.
Thanks in advance.
Toolbar add-ins generally appear in the add-ins tab of the ribbon in Excel 2007. Make sure you have the add-ins tab displayed (if not you can turn it on under excel options).
If that still isn't working you'll need to go online and read up on altering the code to conform to the ribbon - there are a lot of resources out there should you need to do this.

Resources