The Anchorage

Personal website of Gregory K. Maxey, Commander USN (Retired)

• Quarterdeck
• What's New
• Microsoft Word Tips
• Consulting
• Chain Locker
• Lucky Bag
• Contact
• Search

Do you have ad-blocking software enabled? While I respect your right to do so, your donations and the minimal advertisements on this site help to defray internet and other costs of providing this content. Please consider excluding this website from blocking or turning off the blocker while browsing this site.

This Microsoft Word Help & Microsoft Word Tips page is the fourth in a series of tips pages written to show how to apply and use the ribbon control attributes to define, modify and display control images and labels. See the Word Help & Tips Index for links to the other pages in this series.

In the earlier tips pages in this series you saw how to apply built-in images, images from the document's Office OpenXML File format data store (i.e., customUI\images folder) or images from external sources to a static control. In this tips page we look at creating dynamic controls such as toggle buttons that take different images and labels "on the fly" depending on the toggle state.

The illustration below shows two views of a custom ribbon tab that I created for this tips page. One shows the images and labels for toggle button controls in the toggled (or pressed state) and the other shows those same controls in the un-pressed state. You can download the demonstration document used to create this pages which contains the associated ribbon, custom XML and VBA callbacks using this link: Ribbon Images & Labels Part IV

toggleButton controls shown in the pressed stated


toggleButton controls shown in the un-pressed state

Dynamic Ribbon

At this point, if you are not already familiar with them, I need to introduce you to some of the basic attributes and methods that make the ribbon dynamic.

• To create and work with a dynamic ribbon in VBA you must first create a ribbon object. In its simplest form the XML and VBA callback is shown below:

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

• As you can see, the onLoad attribute is part of the XML root element customUI.

Public myRibbon As IRibbonUI
  Sub Onload(ribbon As IRibbonUI)
  Set myRibbon = ribbon
lbl_Exit:
  Exit Sub
End Sub

• When the ribbon is loaded a ribbon object "myRibbon" is created by the VBA callback.
• The ribbon object is declared as a global variable and has two methods ".Invalidate" and ".InvalidateControl."
• The following examples will demonstrte how these methods are used with VBA callbacks to create dynamic custom ribbon controls.

Examples

Group 1 contains a toggleButton control that displays the built-in imageMso "FileOpen" or "FileClose" depending on the state of the toggle (i.e., pressed in/not pressed in). This means that we will have to keep track of the toggle state. There are various ways to do this. In this example I used global variables in the VBA project.

Group 2 contains a toggleButton control that displays one of two custom .PNG image files loaded from an external source. It contains a second toogleButton control that has a problem and can't display its image.

• I used the Custom UI Editor to load the same two .PNG image files into the documents OpenXML File format data store "customUI\Images."
• Unfortunately Microsoft made it very difficult to access these files in a dynamic scenario using the getImage attribute and VBA callback.
• The callback fails (actually it will cause a runtime error) and the image won't display.

Note: This can cause problems if you want to distribute your document to another user. If you use custom images from an external source then you will have to provide the images separately with the document. Of course this is not a real problem if you are a developer using an application such as Visual Studio to prepare complete solutions where your images are packaged as resources. But, this tips page just deals with VBA and it is real shame that Microsoft hasn't made this any easier. All hope is not lost. There are work-a-rounds. None pretty, but they will work.

Group 3 demonstrates one limited work-a-round. It contains a dynamicMenu control with a custom toggleButton control.

• Unlike all other controls, the dynamicMenu control has a getContent attribute that can be used with a VBA callback to access images stored in the document's data store.
• Let's look at the XML used to create the control and the VBA callback for the getContent attribute:

<group id="Grp3" label="Group 3 - Dynamic Menu with Custom Images">
  <dynamicMenu id="Grp3DM1" label="Demo Dynamic Menu" size="normal"
               getContent="RX.GetContent" />
</group>

• In the XML we have simply added the dynamicMenu control and specified the label and size. All the other attributes that define the control will be returned using the getContent attribute and a VBA callback.

Sub GetContent(control As IRibbonControl, ByRef returnedVal)
Dim xml As String
Select Case control.ID
  Case "Grp3DM1"
    Select Case bStateGrp3Tog1
      'Return this bit of XML pointing to an image in the customUI\images folder
      Case "True"
        xml = "<menu xmlns=""http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"" itemSize=""large"" >" "<toggleButton id=""Grp3Tog1"" image=""Lighton"" label=""On"" getPressed=""RX.GetPressed"" onAction=""RX.ToggleOnAction""/>" "</menu>"
      'Return this bit of XML pointing to a different image in the customUI\images folder
      Case Else
        xml = "<menu xmlns=""http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"" itemSize=""large"" >" "<toggleButton id=""Grp3Tog1"" image=""Lightoff"" label=""Off"" getPressed=""RX.GetPressed"" onAction=""RX.ToggleOnAction""/>" "</menu>"
    End Select
    returnedVal = xml
    myRibbon.InvalidateControl "Grp3DM1"
  Case Else
    'Do Nothing
End Select
End Sub

• You should see that if the toggle state is true then one XML string is returned by the callback. If not then another string is returned.
• In this way we are able to use the static image attribute and a dynamicMenu control to access the images in the document's data store customUI\images.

This concludes this tips page. In the fifth and final tips page in this series, Ribbon Images & Labels Part V, you will see a work-a-round that lets us access the document's data store customUI\images and apply custom images from that store to other dynamic controls "on the fly."

This page was last updated on March 09, 2021

Website Privacy Statement

Back to top    Back to Word Tips