How do I distribute a single ribbon tab and custom icons

[Gilgamesh1964]

Hello,

I'm using MS Project 2016.

I have been working on a single custom MS Project tab (with (hopefully) custom icons) that I want to distribute to other people in my organisation.

Originally I wanted to something simple in VBA like in (much) older versions of MS Project where you could import a menu. However my searches found this is no longer possible with answers all pointing to the export/import tool for ribbon customisation.

My issue with that approach is that is that the destination user would get all of my customisations and any previous customisations they had would be wiped out. They would not be happy.

So basically I just want to distribute a single tab without changing any other customisation that the destination user may have.

I am thinking of going back to VBA and parsing the MSProject.officeUI file to insert my tab. I do feel this may be a convoluted approach and was wondering if people knew of an alternate approach.

I'm looking at the CustomUI Editor to look at getting the custom tabs into the xml ribbon. Unless others have a better suggestion.

Edit

Just played around with CustomUI Editor (first time) and it does not look like it will work with MS Project. So to revamp the question on Icons - Can people direct me to a tutorial on how to create custom icons and distribute them with the ribbon tab for MS Project. The ones I have found have only been for word and Excel using the CustomUI Editor.

Thank You.

[#2]

Gilgamesh1964 --

When a user imports a Ribbon and QAT customization file into their copy of Microsoft Project, the software automatically wipes out any customizations the user has made to their Ribbon and QAT previously. To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to change this default behavior and I do not know of any other way to share customizations with your users.

Why don't you simply ask your users to take a screenshot of their own customization settings BEFORE they import your customization file? Then, after they import your customization file, they can refer back to their screenshot and add back the buttons that disappeared during the import process. Just a thought. Hope this helps.

[#3]

@Gilgamesh1964 

Since as Dale noted, importing your customization will overwrite any other customization the user may have created, here are a couple of ideas you might want to explore.

1. From the old MSDN Project customization forum I recall an article for customizing the ribbon with VSTO. I don't have Visual Studio so I never tried it but you can check it out at:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ca3019f4-3856-4b03-adeb-bd1e6f79df93/customizing-the-... 

2. The second thought is to create a user "how to" document so users can create and add your customization to their existing ribbon. You of course will have to provide the customized items (i.e. icons, macros, etc.).

Just some thoughts.

John

[#4]

@Date Howard
@John-project

Thank you for your responses,

Unfortunately I don't have a Visual Studio licence for work so I can't try that out.

I will consider those manual options moving forward.

[#5]

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.
John