We use a 3rd party Excel Addin to populate data in an Excel worksheet. I've been given the task of writing a C# app (WinForms or VSTO) that will automatically click the Ribbon button and process the data.
The problem is I can't find any way to automate clicking the Ribbon button (on the Add-ins tab) using C# code.
I've also tried using Win32 API's to send key presses to the parent Excel window (using SendMessage), but the Key presses weren't received. (I checked using Spy++).
And looked at the public methods exposed in the Add-in assembly, but it didn't contain any public methods to do the same as clicking the ribbon button.
Does anyone know how I can click a ribbon button in the Excel (add-ins) ribbon using C# code?
Look at the SendKeys method of the Excel Application class. It allows you to send the keys directly to Excel. You can press the Alt key to see which shortcuts are assigned to which buttons / ribbon tabs. I automated some tests using this and it worked fine.
If you needed even more complex things you could also look into Sikuli. It's based on image recognition and is using Java.Robots class for sending keypresses and clicks. Automating UI tasks is quite easy with it.
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I am working on Excel VSTO project. My requirement is when ribbon button click i opened window form it is having datagridview with data, I want to select some rows and drag and drop data into work sheet. can you please help the some sample code to do this requirement.
It is not clear what kind of form you are opening in Excel by clicking on the ribbon button. But let's suppose it is a windows form. If so, you can take a look at the Walkthrough: Performing a Drag-and-Drop Operation in Windows Forms.
To perform drag-and-drop operations within Windows-based applications you must handle a series of events, most notably the DragEnter, DragLeave, and DragDrop events. By working with the information available in the event arguments of these events, you can easily facilitate drag-and-drop operations.
Read more about that in the How to: Perform Drag-and-Drop Operations Between Applications articles.
I would like to embed a standalone WPF form inside an Excel sheet.
Microsoft provide information on how to host a WPF form inside an Excel Action Pane or Task Pane here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772076.aspx
However, I'm unable to find information on how I can do this within the Excel sheet itself. Is this possible? Should I just load the form when the user clicks on the tab? Or is there a better way to do this?
I've never seen that anywhere so I guess it's not possible.
What I have done a few times (but never in production) is your second suggestion
Should I just load the form when the user clicks on the tab? Or is there a better way to do this?
Yes, this should work fine, there is something like WPF host you can use on standard form or create another project in your solution (WPF project) and call it from VSTO
I have a custom Ribbon Split button in outlook. I ideally want to invoke the top button of the split button(not the drop down) from my outlook Add-in. To do that I got the control of split button using Redemption and when i try to execute it I am getting IAccessible Error.I am able to invoke any other normal button with this approach. I googled around all things but not able to find the solution. Any help or suggestion will be of great help. below code shows how I got the control of button
Redemption.SafeRibbonControl newControl = cRibbon.Controls.Item("Add With Template");
newControl.Execute();
I'm writing a program in C# to automate another application. I use user32 api. When the external application needs user input, my C# program fills the boxes and presses the buttons. When a new window comes up, I can find it and it's controls using findwindow() and findwindowex() function but when this dialog comes up (in the picture) I cannot find the controls in it(the buttons). Even UI Spy cannot show them. I tried to send key events to this window but nothing happened. Can you give me some tips how to go on?
I am developing an Office add-in. Due to some limitations of ribbon controls (e.g. menuSeparator has no visibility control or splitButton cannot host a dynamicMenu only a menu), I need to be able to cause the Office app to reload the ribbon by repeating a call to my add-in's IRibbonExtensibility.GetCustomUI.
Is this possible?
As far as I know ribbon add-ins, this would require to stop and then restart your add-in. There must be a way to do so given that one can access the list of add-ins in outlook. you could run another instance of your add-in which would first close the previous one, then return the updated ribbon XML. But this means that it would not be applicable while the user is clicking on the ribbon's components, and you would have to save all your data somewhere and then read it to restore the add-in status. In addition, the user may see the ribbon disapearing and appearing again, which may not be appreciated.
Would the Ribbon.Invalidate() method work for your use case? I frequently use it to refresh the ribbon when I've dynamically added/removed items.
For example, in the Ribbon c# file (Ribbon1.cs by default):
this.ribbon.Invalidate();
When the ribbon needs to be refreshed. This assumes you've set this.ribbon in the Ribbon_Load method.