New feature / custom UI elements

[arueckle]

Excel files can contain definitions for custom UI elements, for example ribbons. These are xml files located in the folder "/customUI" of the extracted xlsx/xlsm.

When such custom UI files are included in the generated output of xlsxwriter, excel will render the defined custom elements in its UI. Furthermore, actions can be attached to these custom UI elements (such as functions in an attached vba project).

We extended the workbook and packaging logic to support adding custom ui definitions as described before.

Note: For different Excel versions, different ui files are required (pre/post excel 2014).

This is the fork: https://github.com/arueckle/XlsxWriter
This is the pull-request #280

[jmcnamara]

Same comments apply to this as to #283

However, this feature has never been requested or even mentioned by a user in 5 years of supporting XLSX writing modules and overall it feels very very specific to a single users usecase. In general I like to see some level of interest in a feature from different users before adding it.

At the same time it is clear that you have put a good bit of work into this and the code looks good so I am wiling to work with you to get the feature in.

The first step would be to update this thread with some examples of Custom UIs in Excel: what they are, how you create them, what they are useful for.

[arueckle]

Hi John,

You are right, this may be a very specific feature.

We searched for a way to include ribbon definitions in the generated excel file which can trigger certain macro actions. In particular we generate excel files that are filled with a lot of values. The user can change these values and upload the file to a web application. Since there are a lot of values and many restrictions, validation on upload-time proved to be inefficient in terms of user experience. We wanted to improve UX by adding validation locally as a macro to the excel file. Executing the validation on every value change was not feasible because there are a lot of values and restrictions across them. Therefore we added an additional ribbon with a validation-button.

However there are other different potential scenarios where such custom UI elements can be beneficial. As an example, a custom button in the ribbon could trigger some upload action that automatically sends information from the excel file to a webserver.

What we did to support custom UI elements was to create such custom elements in excel and analyze the resulting xlsx file. It showed that these custom UI elements were added through separate xml files. Copying these xml files to another xmlx file replicated the UI. That's what we implemented in the library. A method to add xml definitions of custom UI elements. It may be too specific for your library. Furthermore it may be cleaner to generate such UI xml files by the library instead of copying them.

I'll ask a colleague to further describe on how one can obtain these UI xml files and what values they contain.

Regards,
Andreas

[arueckle]

This is some feedback I got from a colleague, related to the creation of custom UI elements:

We found this "Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office" to add custom ribbons in excel sheets.
With this tool you can load any excel file (e.g. .xlsx or xlsm) add a Office 2007 or Office 2010 Custom UI Part in XML format describing the ribbon.
By storing your changes the editor adds the xml into a specific folder in the excel file.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee691832(v=office.14).aspx

It is important to mention that this tool only adds the XML UI representation to the xlsx file. It does not provide any graphical editing of the UI itself.

[jmcnamara]

There doesn't seem to be any progress on this and there hasn't been any general interest, so closing.