Is there a way of showing a customUI tab in Word when the document is opened?

Question

I have a custom ribbon tab in Word, created with the CustomUI editor, with a host of buttons that all work fine. I am trying to find out if I can set the focus of this custom tab when the Word document is opened. [Or when a new document is created.]

Currently, it just shows the Home tab by default. i have found ways of turning the custom tab on and off, but not to 'set focus' to it.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I couldn't get the Sendkeys solution to work reliably enough. The Active Accessibility solution seems to work, but needs a bit more time than I have. I'll certainly review this method later.

I did find that there is a way of displaying the custom tab if it is the first one in the tab list. I used these settings:

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui">
<ribbon startFromScratch="false"> 
<tabs>
<tab id="customTab" insertBeforeMso="TabHome" label="CustomTabName">

Thanks for the alternatives. Much appreciated.