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Office RibbonX Editor

Source: fernandreu/office-ribbonx-editor: An overhauled fork of the original Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office, built with WPF (github.com)

Contents

Overview

The Office RibbonX Editor is a standalone tool to edit the Custom UI part of Office open document file format. It contains both Office 2007 and Office 2010 custom UI schemas.

The Office 2010 custom UI schema is the latest schema and it’s still being used in the latest versions of Office including Office 2019, Office 2021 and Office 365.

To learn more about how to use these identifiers to customize the Office ribbon, backstage, and context menus visit:

Improvements

This GitHub project is a fork of Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office. Built on Windows Forms, the original editor by Microsoft is useful on its own, but it has some limitations. Rather than trying to address those limitations by performing small contributions to the original project, this repo offers a complete redesign of the project in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Features of this overhauled editor include:

  • ScintillaNET (via SctintillaNET.WPF) as text editor, with seamless syntax highlighting
  • The TreeView allows you to have more than one file open, easily switching between different customUI files (for example, for copying code from one file to another)
  • A multi-tab layout, allowing to have multiple files open simultaneously (including icon previews)
  • List of recently opened files showing up on the file menu (thanks to RecentFileList)
  • A Reload on Save option that avoids losing any external changes (for more info, see the section below)
  • Possibility of customizing some aspects of the editor such as font size and color
  • Plus all the features of the original Windows Forms project

Screenshot

Download / Build status

To download the latest release, go to the following link:

https://github.com/fernandreu/office-ribbonx-editor/releases/latest

To download the latest development build instead, go to the Artifacts section on Azure Pipelines:

https://dev.azure.com/fernandreu-public/OfficeRibbonXEditor/_build/latest?definitionId=1&branchName=master

How does the Reload on Save option work?

An Office 2007+ file (.xlsm, .xlam, .pptm, .docx, etc.) is nothing more than a .zip file with a custom extension. When the Office RibbonX Editor opens one of those files, it unzips it into a temporary location first, and then it shows the content from there. To save the file, it will apply any changes to the unzipped files, and zip everything back to its original location.

The way you would use the original Custom UI Editor is similar to the following:

  1. If the file you want to edit is open in Excel, close it first
  2. Open that file in the Custom UI Editor
  3. Edit the xml files, icons, etc.
  4. Save the file in the Custom UI Editor (and close it if you wish)
  5. Open the file back in Excel, and enjoy the changes you just made

However, what would happen if you forget Step 1 and Excel has the same file open when you are using the tool? Your workflow could then look like this instead:

  1. Open that file in the Custom UI Editor
  2. Edit xml files, icons, etc.
  3. You realise you had the file open in Excel, so you close it there first
  4. But you also had unsaved changes in Excel, so you save the file before closing it
  5. Save the file in the Custom UI Editor (and close it if you wish)
  6. Remember: all this time since Step 1, the Custom UI Editor was looking at a temporary unzipped copy of the Excel file that did not include the changes saved in Step 3!
  7. Open the file back in Excel. The changes you made in the Custom UI Editor (Step 2) are there, but the ones you did in Excel (Step 3) have disappeared

The Reload on Save button adds an extra step to the process as a safety precaution in this scenario. In essence, Step 4 will no longer use the temporary unzipped copy of the Excel file that was generated in Step 1, but will generate a new one instead. As a consequence, any external changes you might have done in the meantime (i.e. Step 3) will no longer get lost. If you did not make any external changes, the Reload on Save button won’t have any noticeable impact for you.

Backlinks:

list from [[Office RibbonX Editor]] AND -"Changelog"