Office Ribbon Design and VSTO

1
votes

I know there are at least two ways to customize the ribbon, using at template add-in (like Word) and a ribbon XML editor, or by using a VSTO add-in project. Are there other ways?

Also, I recently inherited an exiting VSTO ribbon project at a new job. As I'm going through this project and dissecting it, I see that all it really does is either call a VBA subroutine, function or inserts an auto-text entry. I also saw other distressing things like paths to templates hard-coded into the project, the list of various company office locations embedded into the logic of the code, as opposed to drawing these things from a table in SQL Server.

Does it make sense to do this via a VSTO project if all you are doing is calling VBA routines? I mean, wouldn't it make much more sense to customize the ribbon directly in a global template if all you are doing is calling built-in routines? So far I don't see anything this custom VSTO project is doing that VBA can't do all by itself. Seems to be overly complicated to me. Thanks.

1
ms-officevsto

1 Answers

0
votes

Yes, you can embed the custom UI and VBA code into the macro enabled document. Be aware, VBA macros are not designed for distributing the solution on multiple PC. That is for add-ins were introduced. Anyway, it is up to you which way is to choose.

I'd recommend developing a VSTO based application-level add-in. See Walkthrough: Creating Your First Application-Level Add-in for Word for more information.