RibbonX for Outlook

RibbonX refers to the extensibility mechanism for the Ribbon. The architecture of RibbonX is very different from the design of CommandBar, CommandBarButton, and CommandBarControl objects offered in versions of Office earlier than 2007 Microsoft Office system. RibbonX for Outlook uses an interface that you implement in your add-in. Once you have implemented the IRibbonExtensibility interface in your add-in, Outlook calls the IRibbonExtensibility.GetCustomUI procedure in your add-in to obtain extensible markup language (XML) that describes your customizations for a given Inspector type. The XML markup then causes your add-in to run callback procedures that execute custom actions associated with your Ribbon commands.

To customize the Ribbon in Outlook, you must write an add-in. You can update an existing add-in or write an add-in that only targets Outlook. The add-in can be native or managed. Outlook does not support customization of the Ribbon using Microsoft Office Open XML Format Files. Unlike other Office applications such as Microsoft Office Word 2007 or Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you cannot customize the Ribbon using Visual Basic for Applications in Outlook.

See Also

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