synchronize Outlook Ribbon togglebutton with registry settings in VB.Net for an Add-In

Albin Gyllander 0
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I am building an Outlook Add-In in Visual Basic and I have a togglebutton in the ribbon that controls whether a setting is on or off. This settings is saved and retrieved using "GetSettings" and "SaveSetting" which saves information to the Windows Registry (to my understanding). I want the togglebutton the correspond to changes made to that setting as it can be changed in other places than just the togglebutton. My problem would be solved if I could access the value of the togglebutton and setting it manually but as I have understood it: I cannot access it as I am building my ribbon in XML. I have not been able to find a solution to this, can anyone help?

Side note: If I add my togglebutton to the taskbar in Outlook and from there toggle the settings, the togglebutton in the ribbon doesn't change to "pressed" mode. Perhaps this is something that can be fixed with any provided solution from anyone :)

ribbonx outlook-addin vsto outlook vb.net
2 Answers

Do not rely on the button to store the state for you - whenever it changes, it is your responsibility to refresh the Ribbon (by calling IRibbonUI.Invalidate), which will cause Outlook to invoke your callback on the toggle button to determine its state. You just need to store the appropriate state in your code.

Dmitry Streblechenko0

You need to use IRibbonUI.Invalidate or for a single control you may use the IRibbonUI.InvalidateControl method to get your ribbon callbacks invoked for updating the cached values according to the state loaded from settings.

For example, if an add-in implements the getPressed callback procedure for a toggle button, the function is called once, the state loads, and then if the state needs to be updated, the cached state is used instead of recalling the procedure. This process remains in place until the add-in signals that the cached values are invalid by using the Invalidate method, at which time, the callback procedure is again called and the return response is cached. The add-in can then force an immediate update of the UI by calling the Refresh method (VSTO).

You can read more about the Fluent UI (aka Ribbon UI) in the following articles:

Eugene Astafiev0
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