1

I produced several custom macros in Windows, modified the XML so that a custom Ribbon Tab was visible in the 2013 version of Windows, and everything was wonderful.

I'm now trying to produce equivalent functionality for Excel 2011 for Mac. I did the following: View >> Toolbars >> Custom Toolbars and Menu. I then went to the "Commands" toolbar >> Macros, and dragged SmileyFace macros to the main toolbar. I then changed the images, modified the text, and it worked locally.

For redundancy, I also added a new menu to "Toolbars and Menu" and added all my macros to that toolbar as well, which appeared as some sort of goofy, nebulous floating box. I attached the macros to the document using the "attach" button.

However, when I send the document to colleagues, the only thing that appears is that nebulous floating custom toolbar, with none of the macros mapped to buttons, and the buttons don't have my custom image.

How do I do this?

Parseltongue
  • 11,157
  • 30
  • 95
  • 160

1 Answers1

1

The most recent version of Excel 2011 (14.3.5) seems to save custom toolbars in a single file in specific user folder:

Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011/Microsoft Excel Toolbars.xlsx

(original source here)

When I saved an Excel 2011 workbook with a custom toolbar on one Mac, and transferred it to another, the toolbar did not appear. When I coied the Microsoft Excel Toolbars.xlsx file over (and dropped it in the proper location), the toolbar did appear.

Note: This location may be specific to more recent versions of Office 2011; older versions seem to store them in Users/[User]/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011.

Short-term, you may need to distribute the toolbar file along with the spreadsheet, as well as some means (via script and/or manual instruction) of copying it into the expected location.

<pure speculation> Longer-term, maybe there's a way to override this default behavior and point to a 'local' copy of the toolbars stored in the distributed file itself. Or, maybe you can use the toolbar file as a template for the distributed spreadsheet. </pure speculation>

wlgreg
  • 451
  • 4
  • 8
  • This is probably right, but it will be a while before I can confirm. I was familiar with the rather kludgy way of resolving the issue (transferring the whole directory), but I was looking for a simpler solution to embed the toolbar within the spreadsheet. – Parseltongue Jul 01 '13 at 13:51
  • Could you 'roll your own' pseudo-toolbar? Freeze the first 4 (or so) rows of the sheet, color them gray, add buttons (via the developer tab), and attach macros/VBA routines? Just a thought. – wlgreg Jul 01 '13 at 16:15
  • Clever. Let me check on this – Parseltongue Jul 01 '13 at 17:38