Excel 2010 - progress bar in application status bar?

Question

How is possible to access the progress bar from excel (from the status bar, on the right , when a bigger file loading appears a progress bar )?

I would like to show a progress bar(VSTO in c# plugin doing some heavy calculations), without loosing too much working space. 

Or if that is not possible, how can i set the Microsoft.Office.Tools.CustomTaskPane 's title after it was created?

Thank you,

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Kiss Istvan

Answer 1

Hi Kiss Istvan,

The CustomTaskPane's Title property is read-only, so once it's set, it cannot be changed:

Regarding a progress bar that doesn't require too much working space, consider using a Notification Window. This doesn't require any user action (you would make it fade away automatically, say, over 5 seconds when your load operation is complete) -- and it normally appears at the lower right of the screen, out of the way.  You can put any controls or user controls you want in a notification window, including a progress bar.  As a matter of fact, I'm using notification windows in my current VSTO Excel 2010 ribbon project:

(an example of implementing notification windows is at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/diffusedialog.aspx )

A helpful rule of thumb from usability experts is to use the Hourglass cursor for operations requiring between 1 and about 7 seconds, and a progress bar for operations requiring > 7 seconds.

Good luck!

Anonymous9748

Answer 2

Thank you for your help Anonymous9748 . After taking into consideration several solutions, we decided to transform one of our RibbonButtons to a progress bar.  It was not annoying like popping up every half minute a Notification window and took a lot less space thank the custom pane.

Here is the result:

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Kiss Istvan