C# Office add-in 2003/2007 and "classic" menus

[shari.foreht]

We have an office add-in for Word and Outlook, coded originally for
Office 2003. It works ok with Office 2007, where it puts the add-in
under the Add-Ins ribbon item, and then has a Menu, and then our Add-
in. It isn't the prettiest looking place for it, so we are wondering
about modifying it to make use of a custom ribbon.

A couple of concerns with that:
1) We would have to maintain two codestreams. I'm not sure it's
worth it to create a separate ribbon item for it - what would it
really buy us?
2) How would a custom ribbon item be handled by all the add-ins out
there that make the ribbon look like old 2003?

Thoughts/opinions welcome!

thanks

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

1) It's up to you to decide if you want to support the ribbon, my clients
hate how their UI is non-discoverable in the AddIns tab. You can look at
http://xldennis.wordpress.com/2006/12/22/using-iribbonextensibilitys-type-library-with-com-add-ins/
for a way of using the Office 2003 PIA's and still handling the ribbon using
the tlb referenced in the articles and available for download. I've used
that method and it works in managed code.

2) Hard to say what effects those addins would have, that you'd have to test
for yourself.