How to Hack the Access 2010 & Access 2013 Customized Application Ribbon to Build Custom Ribbons Using Ezy Access Ribbon Builder

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Starting with Access 2010, you can customize the Application Ribbon by right-clicking in the Ribbon-bar and selecting  Customize the Ribbon from the popup menu. You can use macro actions to fire custom commands on the Ribbon, using custom tabs, groups, and buttons. You can assign some very basic icons to custom commands and edit the labels, and you can hide Access development environment tabs, groups, and commands

The limitation is that the customization applies to the Access application and is not stored in the database. You can export the customization to an XML file with the extension .exportedUI. You can then import the file to use that customization in any instance of the Access application.

Custom database specific Ribbons must be built outside Access and loaded at run-time using VBA or the USysRibbon paradigm. For more information on how these custom ribbons are built look at this Access Extra post How to Build an Access 2007 Ribbon.

I have a ribbon builder tool for Access 2007/2010/2103 which is currently in BETA - Ezy Access RibbonX Builder. Details and the free download are here. With this tool you can build custom ribbons from scratch.

I have come up with a way to make the task of building custom Access ribbon easier, and here I will explain how to build a ribbon like the one in the screenshot at the top of this post.

1. I have a database where all the actions I want to include in my custom ribbon are saved as macros. The ribbon I want to build will also comprise some standard Access menu commands.

2. In Access with my database open, I invoke the Access Options dialog and click on Customize Ribbon in the sidebar, and customise the application ribbon as shown below:

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This customization results in this application ribbon:

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To save this customization in an XML file, I click Import/Export and select Export all customizations, and Access will save the customization with the extension .exportedUI.  You can now click Reset to remove the customization to the application ribbon.

3.  I need to do a few things to the XML file before I can use it in Ezy Access Ribbon Builder:

• Rename the file with the extension .XML.
• Edit the XML file to remove redundant text that is not recognised as well-formed XML by Access when you load a user-generated custom ribbon.

I use the free version of Expression Web 4 (download here) to prepare the XML file.

4. I open my XML file in Expression Web 4:

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I then proceed as follows:

• Right-click in the document and click Reformat XML  to format the XML correctly
• Select and delete the first three lines of the reformatted document:

• Right-click in the document and click Verify well-formed XML...  to check that all the XML parses without error.

5. I save the XML file and exit Expression Web 4.

6. I open the XML file in Ezy Access RibbonX Builder to finesse the custom ribbon by using some different menu elements and the full range of native Office icons.

Update 25 June 2013: XML Notepad 2007 can also be used to work with the XML file.

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7. After working on the XML in the Builder, I have a custom ribbon for my database:

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