Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 29: Customizing Access Ribbons

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The section titled “Developing Custom Access Ribbons” later in this chapter discusses the details of

building custom Access ribbons. In the meantime, however, we should spend some time under-

standing the variety of controls and other features that are possible with Access ribbons. The differ-

ences between toolbars and menus and the Access ribbon are significant, and the following

sections help explain exactly what can be done with the Office ribbon.

New controls for Access ribbons

The Access ribbon supports many more types of controls then the older command bars. In previous

versions of Access, the type and variety of controls you could add to menus and toolbars were

severely limited. Most toolbars included buttons, and a few other types of controls like drop-down

lists, but there were very few options for adding complex or sophisticated controls to command bars.

Access ribbons can contain buttons, text boxes, labels, separators, check boxes, toggle buttons,

edit boxes, and even controls nested within other controls. This chapter has only enough room

to explore a few of these controls, but you can find examples showing how to utilize virtually

every type of ribbon control in Access on the Microsoft Office Web site (http://office.

microsoft.com).

Access features some very interesting controls to use on your custom ribbons. These controls are

used in the default Access ribbon and are accessible to the custom ribbons you add to your appli-

cations. These controls have no analogues in older versions of Access and are completely new to

Access.

SplitButton

The SplitButton is similar to a traditional button in an Access interface. What makes the SplitButton

different is that it is, quite literally, split vertically or horizontally into two different controls. The

left or top side of the control works as any other button and responds to a single click. The right or

bottom side of the button includes an arrow that, when clicked, reveals a selection list of single-

select options.

The example SplitButton in Figure 29.4 reveals a list of reports when the downward-pointing

arrow is clicked.

FIGURE 29.4

The SplitButton is a powerful ribbon control.