Office Ribbon Development Resources
Links to resources and ribbon builders for VBA developers who want to add a professional touch to their applications with custom ribbon interfaces.
Microsoft introduced the ribbon user interface in Office 2007.
Fast forward fifteen years and there are still shockingly few good resources for building custom ribbon interfaces. My goal with this page is to gather links to all the best resources in a single place. If you know of additional resources not listed here–or if any of my links go dead over time–please let me know in the comments below.
And, now, on to the content!
Microsoft Documentation
- Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 1 of 3)
- Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 2 of 3)
- Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 3 of 3)
Gunter Avenius
When I first started developing ribbon user interfaces, Gunter Avenius's site was invaluable. I think he still has the best collection of articles for Access ribbon developers anywhere on the internet.
Ron de Bruin
If you are more of an Excel developer, you may want to check out Microsoft Excel MVP Ron de Bruin's site.
Other Documentation
- Customize the Word Ribbon User Interface (It Doesn't Take Rocket Science), by Gregory K. Maxey
- How to Build a Custom Ribbon in Excel (Using XML and VBA), by Andrew Moss
- Using a Microsoft Office Custom Ribbon UI editor, by Rick from Three Crows VBA Applications and Consulting
- What does it mean to use ribbon callbacks?, answered by Hadi Brais
No Longer Set Ribbon Articles
All of my current and future articles related to the Office ribbon are available on my "Ribbon" tag page:
Mike Wolfe
Third-Party Ribbon Builders
I have never used any of these third-party ribbon builders.
However, I know (and trust) the work of some of the authors (e.g., AccessUI Ribbon & Tree Builder). In other cases, they come implicitly recommended by those I trust (e.g., the Office RibbonX Editor).
AccessUI Ribbon & Tree Builder
This is a free utility from friend of the blog and former Microsoft employee Kevin Bell.
Office RibbonX Editor
This open source project from Fernando Andreu gets the seal of approval from Ron de Bruin himself, so I trust that it's worth looking into.
"If you want to insert RibbonX into a Excel 2007 and up workbook to change the Ribbon, then I suggest you download and install the free Office RibbonX Editor created by Fernando Andreu to make this a lot easier"
-Excel MVP Ron de Bruin
fernandreuRibbonCreator
This shareware/freemium option comes from the aforementioned Gunter Avenius. Based on the quality of his Access ribbon articles linked above, I'll go out on a limb and guess that this is a similarly-high quality tool.
Easy Ribbon Builder
This commercial product is specifically aimed at Excel consultants. I'm not at all familiar with its developer, but it is another available option. I assume you could use it to build a ribbon for Access, but it looks like you would need to use Excel to design and build the ribbon itself.
