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Can anyone tell me if it's possible to create a custom ribbon in Excel 2007, without using the 'Custom UI Editor' software?

With the Editor it's really easy but where I work we can't download external software. Is there any other way to do it like with notepad, word??

Many Thanks in Advance

Doug Glancy
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Eddie
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    you may try looking [here](http://www.rondebruin.nl/win/section2.htm) - Ron De Bruin's web page under Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar pages – guitarthrower Dec 30 '13 at 20:43
  • @guitarthrower thanks for the pointer. I took a look at this, changed the file extention name from xlsm to zip >> created a customUI folder in the zip and a file in the folder called customUI.xml. For some reason, when I rename my excel file back to xlsm, I can't see the ribbon. Any ideas if I need to do something else, or if I need to register the new file somewhere else? Thanks. – Eddie Jan 02 '14 at 12:09
  • Can you edit your post and include the code used in the customUI.xml file? – guitarthrower Jan 02 '14 at 16:36
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    @guitarthrower. I found the answer in the link below. I needed to add a 'Relationship Id' tag in the .rels file. Once I did that, it picked up my ribbon. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/3764b806-8285-451c-9101-2da7301020fb/customizing-excel-ribbon?forum=exceldev – Eddie Jan 03 '14 at 14:53
  • Excellent. I'd seen that, but was unable to get it to work so I wasn't sure. You should post a step by step below and accept it as an answer so people know. – guitarthrower Jan 03 '14 at 16:57

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I also don't have the ability to install executables. I can recommend two free Excel addins that may solve this problem for people like us. (Full disclosure, I just created the second addin, hence my answer to a 4-year old question).

The first is Andy Pope's RibbonX Visual Designer It lets you edit ribbons or build them from scratch, and has lots of features, including a form with all the built-in button images, a VBA callback stub generator, and others. I've used this for years, and have learned a lot about Ribbon XML while doing so:

Andy Pope's RibbonX Visual Designer

The second is one I just created to modify the text directly. As I became more familiar with Ribbon customUI XML, I wanted something that would let me create or modify the XML text quickly, so I created the yoursumbuddy customUI Ribbon XML Editor. It's features include instant XML Validation, the ability to edit installed addins and the handling of customUI and customUI14 at the same time:

yoursumbuddy customUI Ribbon XML Editor

Doug Glancy
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