Changing ribbon at run time

Question

Hi,

At present I have my ribbon "MainRibbonUI" stored in the USysRibbons table and this is the ribbon set in the Current Database options.

Since I want now to develop a multilanguage customization, I wanted to have several ribbons in several languages stored and give the user the opportunity to change language at run time.

How can I achieve this?

Thanks, Lauro

Answer 1

Hello Lauro,

You need to use ribbon callbacks in the ribbon XML instead of attributes. When required you may call the IRibbon.Invalidate method which invalidates the cached values for all of the controls of the Ribbon user interface. For each of the callbacks the add-in implements, the responses are cached. For example, if an add-in writer implements the getImage callback procedure for a button, the function is called once, the image loads, and then if the image needs to be updated, the cached image is used instead of recalling the procedure. This process remains in-place until the add-in signals that the cached values are invalid by using the Invalidate method, at which time, the callback procedure is again called and the return response is cached. The add-in can then force an immediate update of the UI by calling the Refresh method.

Dim MyRibbon As IRibbonUI
Sub MyAddInInitialize(Ribbon As IRibbonUI)
    Set MyRibbon = Ribbon
End Sub

Sub myFunction()
    ‘ Invalidates the caches of all of this add-in’s controls 
    MyRibbon.Invalidate()            
End Sub

Read more about the Fluent UI (aka Ribbon UI) in the following series of articles:

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)

Also you may find the sample solution described in the following articles:

Chapter 11: Creating Dynamic Ribbon Customizations (1 of 2)

Chapter 11: Creating Dynamic Ribbon Customizations (2 of 2)

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