Ribbon Tabs and Visual Basic 6 COM-Addins

[Peter Karlström]

Hi

I have developed a pretty large COM Addin for Word/Excel in VB6 to a customer.
Now, they will be upgrading from Office XP to Office 2007, and I'm
investigating possibilities and problems in the migrating process.
The customer doesn't want the code to be converted to a .NET application, so
I'm stuck with VB6.
Now, is it possible to create custom Ribbon Tabs from a VB6 COM-Addin, and
if so, how can this be done.
I have searched everywere but all samples is XML or .NET-based.

Thanks in advance

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You can work with the ribbon from a VB6 addin, I do it all the time.

Just put your ribbon handlers and implements statement for
IRibbonExtensibility in the same class that handles IDTExtensibility. I
don't have any samples up for Word or Excel but I do have an Outlook 2007
project in VB6 that handles the ribbon on my sample templates page at
http://www.slovaktech.com/outlook_2007_templates.htm.

If you want to have a project that supports Office 2007 while still running
on older versions of Office that gets trickier and goes into unsupported
territory, but it's also doable. Take a look at Dennis Wallentin's blog
(XL-Dennis) about his XLIRibbonExtensibility.tlb and handling the ribbon
that way.

 

[Peter Karlström]

Hi Ken

Thank you for your quick reply.
Your excellent sample for Outlook will be of great help.
I looked into it and saw how the integration is done.

Again, thanks.

Regards
--
Peter Karlström
Midrange AB
Sweden

You can work with the ribbon from a VB6 addin, I do it all the time.

Just put your ribbon handlers and implements statement for
IRibbonExtensibility in the same class that handles IDTExtensibility. I
don't have any samples up for Word or Excel but I do have an Outlook 2007
project in VB6 that handles the ribbon on my sample templates page at
http://www.slovaktech.com/outlook_2007_templates.htm.

If you want to have a project that supports Office 2007 while still running
on older versions of Office that gets trickier and goes into unsupported
territory, but it's also doable. Take a look at Dennis Wallentin's blog
(XL-Dennis) about his XLIRibbonExtensibility.tlb and handling the ribbon
that way.