A 'hello world' VBA program

Creating a tab

• Enter the code below in a standard VBA module

1. Public Sub CreateMyUI()

3.     ' Get a reference to the default rxCustomUI instance

4.     Dim myCustomUI As rxCustomUI

5.     Set myCustomUI = rxCustomUI.defaultInstance

7.     ' Get a reference to the rxRibbon object of our rxCustomUI instance

8.     Dim myRibbon As rxRibbon

9.     Set myRibbon = myCustomUI.ribbon

11.     ' Create a new tab

12.     Dim myTab As rxTab

13.     Set myTab = New rxTab

15.     ' Give the new tab a label

16.     myTab.Label = "My First Tab"

18.     ' Add the new tab to myRibbon's tabs

19.     myRibbon.tabs.Add myTab

22.     ' Render the UI

23.     myCustomUI.Refresh

25. End Sub

• Run the sub to create an empty tab labeled 'My First Tab'

  

Code Analysis

Dim myCustomUI As rxCustomUI
Set myCustomUI = rxCustomUI.defaultInstance

rxCustomUI is at the top of the object model hierarchy. Here, we are holding on to the default rxCustomUI instance for the current office application session.

' Get a reference to the rxRibbon object of our rxCustomUI instance
Dim myRibbon As rxRibbon
Set myRibbon = myCustomUI.ribbon

Each rxCustomUI object owns a unique rxRibbon object. Here, we are holding on to the rxRibbon object of myCustomUI

' Create a new tab
Dim myTab As rxTab
Set myTab = New rxTab
 
' Give the new tab a label
myTab.Label = "My First Tab"

Here we create a new rxTab object and give it a label

' Add the new tab to myRibbon's tabs
myRibbon.tabs.Add myTab

Each rxRibbon object has a collection of rxTab objects (accessible through its .tabs property). Here we add the tab we created above to our ribbon's tabs

' Render the UI
myCustomUI.Refresh

To ensure optimal performance, UI updates always take place in two steps:

1. Update the target rxCustomUI state, which we have done above
2. Render the updated UI, which we are doing here

Notes

This sub will create a new empty tab every time it is run. We can prevent that from happening by adding a call to rxCustomUI.clear before we start updating its state, which resets the object's state (see #Making our code more compact) To explicitly reset the state of the default rxCustomUI, you can execute the lines below in the immediate window:

rxCustomUI.defaultInstance.clear
rxCustomUI.defaultInstance.refresh