How to customise button icons to reflect the purpose of the macro in Office 2010?

Topic

New Reply

I like to automate certain tasks, particularly in Word and Excel (Office 2010). For example, I have recorded a simple macro to insert ² at the click of an icon. I would like the icon to reflect the purpose, but can find no way to edit it, so am stuck with the icons MS provides. In Office 2003 there was a button editor I used to use. What happened to that, and how do I work round it? I have a number of simple images but don’t know where I could store them, to make them available in Office.

Reply | Quote

Replies

The days of a simple icon editor in Word are long gone. It is possible to create your own icons for the buttons but it is certainly not quick, nor easy. Personally, I am happy with the hundreds of icons available in office since I can always find one close enough to what I want.

You haven’t told us where you placed your macro buttons, nor whether you are editing RibbonX already so this might be a massive learning curve for you.

If you REALLY want to explore the custom icon path,
http://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s2/win009.htm
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/ribbon_custom_icons.html
http://www.leafcreations.org/blog/2012/01/03/how-to-use-custom-images-on-ribbon/

Reply | Quote

Thank you, Andrew. I recorded the macro, then used the customise ribbon option to put it in a special group on the home tab. I re-named it and assigned it an icon from the 180 that MS offer. I wanted to make an icon to reflect the macro’s purpose, which is to insert ° or ². I wanted a simple image, such as °C or x². None of the available icons reflect that. Is it possible to pull icons from another source, or add to the list on offer? I have looked at the RibbonX and Custom UI Editor, and I can see it is going to be a struggle!

Reply | Quote

As Andrew pointed out, there are far more icons built into Office than the ones offered in the customize options in Word.

Read through this page all the way to the bottom (but don’t just skip to the bottom).
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/modify_qat_button_image_text.html

It tells you how to modify the XML in the customization file for your Ribbon to add one of those icons. To get actual icons you create yourself, you would need to do a full customization outside of the Word interface.
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/customize_ribbon_main.html
It is not that difficult, but is substantially more work than through the interface. (It is also much more flexible and lets you attach customizations to individual templates (or documents).

Reply | Quote

It certainly is a struggle, but worth it. I put my customised buttons on the quick access toolbar, but they could equally go on the ribbon. Once you have got it working, you will (probably) find that they disappear again every 6-12 months, so is a great idea to export your customized QAT or ribbon. You can then reload it after a crash, or to another computer. So you only have to go through the pain once! Have a look at the discussion, mainly with Greg Maxey at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/word-2010-edit-icons-on-quick-access-toolbar/336b850d-67db-4c00-8021-ee65ee4f360f
There are some valuable links to other sites scattered through the discussion

Reply | Quote

Andrew – Many thanks for the links! Much appreciated.

Reply | Quote

There is a lot more than 180 office icons but perhaps you can’t get to them all via the seriously-limited Ribbon editing interface under File>Options.

If you do decide to go down the path of editing the xml directly, these links can be useful in identifying the available buttons and the xml required to use them
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4623819/office-2010-add-in-icons-gallery-how-to-extract-icons-from-backstage-tab-d
http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=21103

Reply | Quote

Note, you can save custom QATs in templates and load the templates as Add-Ins. This makes them less vulnerable.

Reply | Quote