Beta Testers For PUP v7?

Posted on by John Walkenbach

Assuming I work non-stop all weekend, I should have a beta version of my PUP v7 add-in ready to go next week. This version works only with Excel 2007.

If you’re interested in doing some informal beta testing, please let me know.

You’ll need a copy of Excel 2007, of course. If you’re able to devote a few hours trying out the utilities (and reporting the bugs to me), I’d appreciate your help. I’m especially interested in recruiting someone who can test it using a non-English version of Excel.

Here’s a tiny image of the PUP v7 ribbon (click to enlarge):

You can view a list of the PUP changes here: What’s New in PUP v7.

Creating that ribbon UI was the biggest challenge. It even includes a dynamicMenu control (for the PUP Bookmarks) which took me about 4-5 hours to figure out and debug. Doing the same thing with a CommandBar control would have taken about 30 minutes.

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11 thoughts on “Beta Testers For PUP v7?”

  2. Hi John

    Many non-english versions do not exist yet. Like the norwegian version.

    Would love to see how you created that -is it “MenuControl” now ?

  3. John, are you able to use the usual spreadsheet-based-menu-building-helper approach for building ribbon menus like this in VBA, or is it much more complicated now? Your answer to this question could well determine whether I buy Office 2007 in the next few weeks or years.

    Thanks

  4. Graham, customizing the Ribbon is much more complex than the old approach. There are no callbacks available to populate groups on the fly, so you basically have to hard code all of your group items. So if you want to create a group and populate it with the names of all files in a directory, for example, you’re SOL. (Unless you want to move to Visual Studio and VSTO, and then I understand that there is a way, although I haven’t explored it yet myself.)

    Harald, I have an example of using the dynamic menu control on my blog (among a few other RibbonX examples) if you’re interested. http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2007/01/09/creating-a-dynamic-menu-an-example/

    There’s a link in the first line to see the rest of the RibbonX work I’ve publised as well.

    Cheers,

    Ken

  5. Harald, that’s good to know. For some reason I assumed that all of the language versions came out at the same time.

    I created that PUP Ribbon UI by writing about 200 lines of hand-crafted XML code (with the assistance of the Office 2007 Custom UI Editor). It’s all done outside of Excel, so when I’m testing the UI, it’s a continual cycle of:

    1. Close the add-in file
    2. Open it in the UI editor
    3. Make some changes
    4. Validate the changes and fix the errors
    5. Save it
    6. Open the add-in and test
    7. GoTo #1

    I guess it’s a lot easier if you use VSTO to create the UI, but that’s foreign territory for me.

    Graham, it’s possible to use a table-driven routine (using data in a worksheet) to create the XML code. In fact, I started to do so but it quickly mushroomed to a complexity level that seemed like a waste of time for what I needed at the time. But, unless you can write some VBA code to unzip and zip the workbook file, inserting the XML part still has to be done outside of Excel.

  6. >>I guess it’s a lot easier if you use VSTO to create the UI

    Yes, as we can create RibbonX and get it validatet in the same enviroment as VSTO.
    Debugging VSTO created managed COM Add-ins require to start Excel, test, and close Excel.

  7. >>>I guess it’s a lot easier if you use VSTO to create the UI
    Yes, as we… …COM Add-ins require to start Excel, test, and close Excel.
    Maybe yes, but never a lot :)

  8. Hello Johh,
    To what extent is a Task pane customisable in 007…
    Can we add a custom task pane, put menus and buttons on them ??

    Regards
    Sam

  9. Sam, as far as I know you can’t do anything with a task pane using VBA. Even trying to display one of the built-in task panes is not reliable. For example:

    Application.CommandBars(“Selection and Visibility”).Visible=True

    You’ll get an error unless this task pane has been displayed manually in the current session.

  10. Stephen Bullen has written a dll with which you can host your userform inside a custom task pane (XL2007 only). Dunno if he published it or not.

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