Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007: VSTO for Excel, Word, and Outlook

17. Working with the Ribbon in VSTO

Introduction to the Office Ribbon

One of the first things you will notice when starting to use Office 2007 is the new user interface known as the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, and the most predominant feature of the new user interface is the Office Ribbon. The Ribbon is a replacement for traditional toolbars and menus; it is used in Word 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007 (in Inspector windows but not Explorer windows), PowerPoint 2007, and Access 2007.

Let’s consider the Ribbon and some related Office Fluent UI features. Figure 17-1 shows the top of the Word window. In the top-left corner is the Microsoft Office Button. This button drops down a menu of commands for working with the document—commands ...