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UI Designer

How do I get to this dialog box?

  1. Open a session document.

  2. On the Appearance tab, in the Menus group, click UI Designer.

With the UI Designer, you can create new controls—including buttons, tabs, and menus—or modify existing controls on the Ribbon. Save your changes as a custom UI file (.xuml) that you can use with other session documents.

Customizing the Ribbon

Design View

Displays a dynamic, graphical view of the ribbon and tabs. Navigate to and select the controls you want to modify.

Insert Controls

Click the items you want to add to the ribbon.

Setting Description
Tab Adds a Ribbon tab on which you can place additional controls.
Group Adds a container for controls.
Button Adds a single button control.
Gallery Adds a menu of buttons.
Split Button Adds a button and a menu.
Button Group Adds a button that contains three individual button controls, including split buttons and button menus (Galleries).
Built-ins Adds a control for built-in features, such as Quick Keys and Office Tools.

New items appear on the far right end of the ribbon. If a button or group is selected in the Design View, new buttons appear in the same group as the selection.

Arrange Controls

Setting Description
Move Up, Move Down, Move Left, Move Right Moves the selected control in the direction specified.
Delete Removes the selected control from the ribbon.
Select Parent Selects the parent control, or container, for the selected child or group control.
Note: To select a button group, click the bottom edge of the group, or, select one of its buttons, and then, under Arrange Controls, click Select Parent.

Review

Setting Description
Preview Displays, in a separate window, the way the Ribbon will appear with the options you selected.

Settings

This area of the UI Designer displays, for the selected control, the settings that allow or require additional input.

The specific items shown will vary, depending on the control that is selected.

Setting Description
Show dialog launcher button Select to add a dialog launcher button next to the label on a Group.
Identifier Use to identify the control when programming with the Reflection API.
Note: See "Dynamically Changing the User Interface" in the VBA Guide or the .NET API Guide.
Visible Select to display the control. You can use the Reflection API to show or hide the control.
Enabled Select to enable the control. You can use the Reflection API to enable or disable the control.
Action Shows the action assigned to the control.
Select Action Click to specify an action for the selected control in the Select Action dialog box.
Modify Subitems Click to add subitems to a control. For example, if you add a gallery to a button group in the Subitems Collection Editor dialog box, click Modify Subitems to add buttons to the menu for that gallery.
Change settings Select to allow changes to the label, image, tooltip, and description of the control.
Note: Changes to these settings overwrite the default properties of the selected action.
Label Specifies the text that appears on the control. If you select an action that is set up to be controlled with a toggle switch (for example, the Connect/Disconnect action), another set of label boxes and images are displayed so you can set the default and selected labels along with their associated images.
Note: An ampersand (&) in front of a character in a label indicates that the character will function as a keyboard accelerator key.
Image Shows the image that appears on the control. Click Select to browse for a .PNG or .JPEG image to appear on the control. Click Remove to remove the image and display only the label for the control without an image.
Tooltip Enter a heading that appears when the pointer is held over the control.
Description Enter a description that appears (below the heading) when the pointer is held over the control.
Reset Click to clear any of changes you've made and restore the default properties of the assigned action.

More information