Ron

Yes, equally I will yours

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
DTHIS
web: www.nickhodge.co.uk
blog: www.nickhodge.co.uk/blog/

FREE UK OFFICE USER GROUP MEETING, MS READING, 27th APRIL 2007
www.officeusergroup.co.uk

"Ron de Bruin" wrote in message
...
I also add it to my site Nick

--

Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl/tips.htm


"Nick Hodge" wrote in message
...
Harlan

And life just got slightly better :-)

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"
<commands
<command idMso="ApplicationOptionsDialog" enabled="false"/
<command idMso="FileExit" enabled="false"/
</commands
</customUI

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
DTHIS
web: www.nickhodge.co.uk
blog: www.nickhodge.co.uk/blog/

FREE UK OFFICE USER GROUP MEETING, MS READING, 27th APRIL 2007
www.officeusergroup.co.uk

"Nick Hodge" wrote in message
...
Harlan

Comments in line

"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
oups.com...
"Nick Hodge" wrote...
. . . I just feel that many of the features on old toolbars were
not discoverable, there's many I've not found/used surely. Now
whether they're more discoverable now is questionable?? For the
average to power user, it's probably a backward step . . .

One big example: I have the Forms toolbar docked on the right hand
side of my Excel 2003 window and the Drawing toolbar docked on the
bottom of it. Not trivial at all to get both on screen at the same
time in Excel 2007.

Harlan, I agree this one, there is no way I know of to move stuff around
the application frame or place near your area of work, e.g tear off


Now there were/are some thoroughly pointless built-in toolbars, such
as the Borders toolbar, that's a much, much bigger PITA to use that
the Border tab in the Format Cells dialog. Getting rid of them is
definitely a good thing. Unfortunately, MSFT got rid of the useful
ones too.


That has to be IYO, as some users... not me, will use that feature
frequently. What's one man's PITA is another man's nirvana. (That's
MSFT's with there Watson SQM data)

. . . and MS 'claim' to have used data collected from the 'User
Experience' program, which most experienced people 'turn off'
...

I believe they did, but I also believe the people who opted in were
disproportionately nonbusiness users using few if any of the more
important business features. How many home users are fetching data
from ODBC data sources? How many are running pivot table reports on
OLAP cubes? How many are using more than 20 different worksheet
functions in their home budgets? On the flip side, how many business
users are allowed to use bandwidth to participate in the program?


That's my contention too, hence I've turned mine on, but I'd agree that
many corporates would not allow by policy, connections of this type.
They need to find a better way of getting this information from a
broader group *pre* beta, as by that stage, particularly with the
'ownership' issue, it's often too late and 'minds are set'. Not that
Companies like Boeing, Ford, etc are not helping to drive, but they have
a very narrow view and one policy per Company I concede.

for example the ribbon is now 'owned' by another group. The
officeMenu (RibbonX element) is owned by the UI team across apps
and even the charting (and shapes) is partly controlled by an
OfficeArt team. . . .
...

Nothing new. Excel has suffered from ever closer integration since
Excel 5 when the first major menu overhaul happened.


And I see that going even further with more of a Worksesque type
'shell'

. . . (Take the dictator app from the other day...no issue in 2007) .
. .

Really? It's possible for the ribbon not to appear at all? That means
not even the row of tabs.

Sure (Jim Rech's)

Sub RemoveRibbon()
Application.ExecuteExcel4Macro "SHOW.TOOLBAR(""Ribbon"",False)"
End Sub

(I know you'll laugh at ExecuteExcel4Macro...I can hear you ;-))


It's possible to hide the QAT and the Office logo which gives access
to file system/printer commands and Excel settings?

See above


BTW, how does one leave the ribbon, QAT and Office logo in place but
disable file system/printer commands as was possible in earlier
versions by disabling but not hiding specific menu items? That is,
does RibbonX allow modification of the Office logo menu?


Sure, you can, the first disables the save menu and the second
re-purposes the print button

<commands
<command idMso="FileSave" enabled="false"/
<command idMso="FilePrint" onAction="myPrint"/
</commands

And this will add an item to a menu on the officeMenu

<officeMenu
<menu idMso="FileSendMenu"
<button id="button1" imageMso="FileOpen" label="Open"
description="Open Something" onAction="OpenMe"/
</menu
</officeMenu


The following will leave you with a blank canvas and just the 'crucial
officeMenu operations. These can be disabled or re-purposed. (See below
ribbonX for one drawback to date)

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"
<ribbon startFromScratch="true"
</customUI

The really unfortunate bit currently is you cannot remove, or probably
more usefully replace the office button icon, or individually remove the
Excel options or Exit Excel buttons. But then I think we all know this
is very V1 and someone has to work with it or we can't suggests
amendments in the real world and staying still was not an option ;-)

I found this link, (three parts) really useful in my limited training so
far

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338202.aspx

I have a developing area on my site

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338202.aspx

and Ron de Bruin's is probably more complete

http://www.rondebruin.nl/ribbon.htm

I know you and many others need a lot more convincing, but we also can
try and adopt and be constructive in our criticism and become
influencers in future changes, bearing in mind MSFT are NOT going to
return to the old commandbars model (I laughed at the launch that
Application.StatusBar, has become Application.CommandBars("Status
Bar")!).

Try it and let's get some dialog going to MS on how to make it better,
it certainly needs that, I agree, but again IMVHO...I like the
direction.

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
DTHIS
web: www.nickhodge.co.uk
blog: www.nickhodge.co.uk/blog/

FREE UK OFFICE USER GROUP MEETING, MS READING, 27th APRIL 2007
www.officeusergroup.co.uk