Microsoft® Access® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

60

Customizing the Ribbon

The Ribbon is the new menu system for Office that was originally introduced in Office 2007, replacing the previous Windows-style menus in all of the Office applications. If you've programmed database applications with custom Command Bar objects in versions of Access prior to 2007, you can still use those Command Bar objects in your database applications with Access 2010. However, the Ribbon is designed to be much more powerful and user-friendly, and is now the new standard for building a customized menu system into an Access database application. Throughout this book so far, you've used the Ribbon to perform or set all sorts of commands, from creating new database objects to working with the various database tools. This lesson discusses how to build custom Ribbons to provide user-defined functionality as well as disable the normal Ribbons in a given database application, using Access 2010.

LESSON SETUP

The lesson is designed to provide a basic overview of working with the Access Ribbon settings. The only requirements are that Access 2010 is installed, you are familiar with the different types of database objects, and you have a general knowledge of what the Ribbon does and how it works. Otherwise, this lesson does not require any other specific knowledge of Access.

THE CUSTOMIZE RIBBON OPTIONS

New to Access 2010 is the Customize Ribbon tab in the Access Options dialog, which provides the various Customize Ribbon options available in the UI. Using this ...