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In Office, a yellow or red message bar is sometimes shown below the ribbon. It is usually red for security related messages, and yellow for information messages.

The screenshot below shows MS Access displaying a typical message bar.

Screenshot of yellow message bar in MS Access

I would like to create a small Word add-on that programatically uses this UI feature. Is that possible? I've searched the MSDN information on customizing Office but can't find any reference on how to do this.

Charles Kenyon
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Olly
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2 Answers2

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I think, in Office's terms, the message bar is actually called Protected View Window. There is an API for it, ProtectedViewWindow, both available for Word & Excel interop.

Take a look at its properties and methods, it'd be helpful to you.

For example, use ProtectedViewWindow.Caption to add your custom messages.

woodykiddy
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  • Thanks for the suggestion. I've now looked into it, but it's evidently [a new security feature](http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-word/archive/2010/09/13/object-model-considerations-for-protected-view-in-word-2010.aspx). I'm trying improve integration between our existing document management system and *Word*. – Olly Oct 16 '12 at 18:00
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The best answer to my own question so far is to style a custom task pane to look like the yellow panel, and to use DockPositionRestrict to prevent it from being moved. Not marking this as the answer just yet in case anyone knows of something better.

Olly
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    Save yourself the pain, this isn't possible because there's a minimum height for custom panes when docked vertically. – Billy Jake O'Connor Apr 25 '18 at 11:55
  • Consider using a modeless UserForm, message box or mouse-over pop-up text. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_win10-mso_365hp/pop-up-text-in-microsoft-word/f070b772-7d8e-4a29-8943-bca01967cb76?tm=1609428405945 – Charles Kenyon Sep 21 '22 at 12:06