Part IV: Using Advanced Excel Features

Sharing User Interface Customizations

In the Excel Options dialog box, the Quick Access Toolbar tab and the Customize Ribbon tab both have an Import/Export button. You can use this button to save and open files that contain user interface customizations. For example, you might create a new Ribbon tab and want to share it with your office mates.

Click the Import/Export button, and you get two options:

•Import Customization File: You are prompted to locate the file. Before you load a file, you are asked whether you want to replace all existing Ribbon and Quick Access toolbar customizations.

•Export All Customization: You are prompted to provide a filename and location for the file.

The information is stored in a file that has a *.exportedUI extension. Unfortunately, importing and exporting is not implemented very well. Excel does not allow you to save or load only the Quick Access toolbar customization or only the Ribbon customizations. Both types of customizations are exported and imported. Therefore, you cannot share your Quick Access toolbar customization without also sharing your Ribbon customizations.

Customizing the Ribbon

The Ribbon is Excel’s primary user interface. It consists of tabs along the top. When you click a tab, it displays a set of commands, and the commands are arranged in groups.

New Feature

The Ribbon was introduced in Excel 2007, but it could not be customized. Excel 2010, however, makes it fairly easy to modify the Ribbon in a number of ways. n

Why customize the Ribbon?

Most users will have no need to customize the Ribbon. If you find that you tend to use the same command over and over, though — and you are constantly clicking tabs to access these commands — then you might benefit for customizing the Ribbon in such a way that the commands you need are on the same tab.

What can be customized

You can customize the Ribbon in these ways:

• Tabs

•Add a new custom tab.

•Delete custom tabs.

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•Add a new group to tab.

•Change the order of the tabs.

•Change the name of a tab.

•Hide built-in tabs.

• Groups

•Add new custom groups.

•Add commands to a custom group.

•Remove commands from custom groups.

•Remove groups from a tab.

•Move a group to a different tab.

•Change the order of the groups within a tab.

•Change the name of a group.

Note

To restore all or part of the Ribbon to its default state, use the Reset button on the Customize Ribbon tab of the Excel Options dialog box. Click this button to display two options: Reset Only Selected Ribbon Tab, and Rest All Customizations. If you choose the latter, you will also lose any Quick Access toolbar customizations that you made. n

That’s a fairly comprehensive list of customization options, but there are some actions that you cannot do:

•Remove built-in tabs — but you can hide them.

•Remove commands from built-in groups.

•Change the order of commands in a built-in group.

Note

Unfortunately, you cannot customize the Ribbon (or Quick Access toolbar) by using VBA macros. However, developers can write RibbonX code and store it in workbook files. When the file is open, the Ribbon is modified to display new commands. Writing RibbonX is relatively complicated, and beyond the scope of this book. n

How to customize the Ribbon

Customizing the Ribbon is done via the Customize Ribbon panel of the Excel Options dialog box (see Figure 23.4). The quickest way to display this dialog box is to right-click anywhere on the Ribbon, and choose Customize The Ribbon.

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FIGURE 23.4

The Customize Ribbon tab of the Excel Options dialog box.

Customizing the Ribbon is very similar to customizing the Quick Access toolbar, which I describe earlier in this chapter. The only difference is that you need to decide where to put the command within the Ribbon. The general procedure is

1.Use the Choose Command From drop-down list on the left to display various groups of commands.

2.Locate the command in the list box on the left, and select it.

3.Use the Customize the Ribbon drop-down list on the right to choose a group of tabs. Main Tabs refer to the tabs that are always visible; Tool Tabs refer to the contextual tabs that appear when a particular object is selected.

4.In the list box on the right, select the tab and the group where you would like to put the command. You’ll need to click the plus-sign control to expand the tab name so that it displays its group names.

5.Click the Add button to add the selected command from the left to the selected group on the right.

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Use the New Tab button to create a new tab, and the New Group button to create a new group within a tab. New tabs and groups are given generic names, so you’ll probably want to give them more meaningful names. Use the Rename button to rename the selected tab or group. You can also rename built-in tabs and groups.

To rearrange the order of tabs, groups, or commands, select the item and use the Move Up and Move Down buttons on the right. Note that you can move a group into a different tab.

Note

Although you cannot remove a built-in tab, you can hide the tab by clearing the check box next to its name. n

Figure 23.5 shows a part of a customized Ribbon. In this case, I added two groups to the View tab (to the right of the Zoom group): Extra Commands (with four new commands), and Text to Speech (with two new commands).

FIGURE 23.5

The View tab, with two new groups added.

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