Active Ribbon Tab Resets to "Home" Ribbon when Opening a File

[DayByDay]

I recently upgraded to Office 2021 from Office 2010 (it's been a minute), and whenever I open a new file, the active tab on the Ribbon reverts to the "Home" ribbon.

I would like for the active Ribbon to remain as the same Ribbon that was active before opening an additional file (like 2010! Just sayin'). I've written a number of custom ribbons that open various specific files programmatically, and it's annoying that Excel now changes the Ribbon to the Home Ribbon whenever I open a new file. Sigh. It's nothing other than annoying, but it's still annoying! LOL!

I haven't been able to find any settings that affect this, and I also haven't been able to find any answers on the internet as of yet.

Suggestions? Am I missing something? Or is this just something that I have to accept with my "upgrade" to 2021? Shall I just add code into my VBA that programmatically changes the Ribbon to whatever tab was active when the macro was called? (I mean, that's always a workaround option, I guess.)

 

[Jaafar Tribak]

I can't test this because I don't have office 2021 and I am not aware of any settings. Does this happen with custom ribbon tabs only ? Do you have any addins installed that may be interfering ? And what about other office apps such as Word, Do they also have the same ribbon issue ?

 

[DayByDay]

No. It happens with all Ribbons, both custom and native. It also happens in Word. It's a new (new to me, anyway) feature of Office, in that any new or newly opened spreadsheet/document opens with the Home Ribbon active. So, if I create a "New" blank spreadsheet or document from the Quick Access Toolbar, that "new" file is displayed with the Home Ribbon active. If I open an existing spreadsheet/document manually, it's opened with the Home Ribbon active. If I open an existing spreadsheet/document programmatically using VBA, it's opened with the Home Ribbon active. If I switch back to the file that was already open before I created/opened the new file, the active Ribbon is the same as I left it. If my understanding is correct, the "feature" is that the Ribbon is now tied to individual documents, rather than the overall application, and all documents are opened to the default of an active Home Ribbon. :/

I expect that, unless there's some setting of which I'm not yet aware, the only way for me to open a new or existing document with an active Ribbon other than the Home Ribbon is to programmatically set the active Ribbon through VBA.

Thoughts?

 

[Jaafar Tribak]

I don't know . Maybe someone else can tell us.

the only way for me to open a new or existing document with an active Ribbon other than the Home Ribbon is to programmatically set the active Ribbon through VBA.

Are you already using vba for restoring the last active ribbon tab ? If so, can you show us the code ?.

Regards.

 

[DayByDay]

Well, I "used" to use Send Keys, but that apparently doesn't work the same with 2021. I went to do just that, and ... it failed in kind of a half-worked manner. :/

And it wasn't that I would restore the last active Ribbon tab. I don't know how to return which Ribbon tab is active. But since I know what tab any given command is on that opens that file, I tried to add a Send Keys line to that command itself to activate the specific Ribbon tab that I wanted after the file loaded. Like I said, it kind of half-worked. It would activate the "Alt" menus, but would either then close the "Alt" menus without doing anything, or leave the "Alt" menus open and type the second "Alt" character in the active field. (2021 custom Ribbon tabs have a two-digit alt character identifier instead of just a single-digit identifier, like 2010 did.)

Plus, the Send Keys would be imperfect for what I wanted, since there are times when a given command performs a series of command with external applications as well, and the Send Keys would then be misapplied to an application outside of Excel. Sigh.