How to determine active ribbon tab?

Question

My addin ribbon has a few controls which show live database values. To avoid frequent updates I need to determine if my addin ribbon tab (created via Ribbon XML) is active or not. Example: I subscribe to the SelectionChange event in Outlook Explorer and
if my tab is active, actual data will be inquired from the DB. If my tab is not active, no DB inquiry should be performed.
How can I do this? I did not find any event I could subscribe to.
Any help is very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Markus

Answer 1

Hello Markus,
The Fluent UI (aka Ribbon UI) doesn't provide anything for that. But you can use the
GetVisibleMso method of the CommandBars class for checking whether a built-in controls is visible or not. You just need to pass the idMso value of the control to the method, see
Office 2013 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers  . But the best way to get the job done is to use callbacks in your custom UI markup. For example, the getVisible callback is invoked when controls are going to be shown on the
ribbon (your tab is active). Thus, you will always know your tab is visible.
C#: bool GetVisible(IRibbonControl control)
VBA: Sub GetVisible(control As IRibbonControl, ByRef visible)
C++: HRESULT GetVisible([in] IRibbonControl *pControl, [out, retval] VARIANT_BOOL *pvarfVisible)
Visual Basic: Function GetVisible(control As IRibbonControl) As Boolean
Read more about the Fluent UI in the following series of articles in MSDN:
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 1 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 2 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 3 of 3)