Overview of Customizing the Ribbon

In comparison to other Office applications such as Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint that rely exclusively on the Ribbon, Microsoft Office Outlook uses both the Ribbon and command bars. In the main application Explorer window, Outlook displays the command bars user interface. In an item window Inspector such as a mail message where authoring is the central user experience, Outlook uses the new Ribbon user interface to expose commands. In order to provide the best authoring and discoverability experience for end users, Outlook item windows display item-specific Ribbons.

For a detailed discussion of the Ribbon and Ribbon extensibility, see Overview of the Ribbon User Interface.

See Also

• Detecting Errors
• Implementing the IRibbonExtensibility Interface
• Overview of the IRibbonControl Object
• Overview of the IRibbonUI Object
• RibbonX for Outlook
• Updating Earlier Code for CommandBars