Question

Hi I am creating my first WPF application that uses Ribbons. The problem I am having is I cannot change the theme of the ribbons. I want to use the Office 2007 Black theme. I have looked everywhere and everywhere I find roughly the same example, I have tried writing it from scratch, copy pasting and everything but it keeps throwing an exception when I try t run the application.

Exception

Set property 'System.Windows.ResourceDictionary.Source' threw an exception.' Line number '11' and line position '18'.

Inner Exception

{"Cannot locate resource 'themes/office2007black.xaml'."}

Xaml Code

<r:RibbonWindow x:Class="DtcInvoicer.MainWindow"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"
    Title="Dtc Invoicer"
    Width="1000" Height="650" WindowStartupLocation="CenterScreen">

<r:RibbonWindow.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/RibbonControlsLibrary;component/Themes/Office2007Black.xaml"/>
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</r:RibbonWindow.Resources>

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    <r:Ribbon x:Name="TopMenuRibbon" Title="First Ribbon">
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Home" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Company" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Employees" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Receivables" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Payables" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Inventory" />
        <r:RibbonTab Header="Settings" />
    </r:Ribbon>
</Grid>
</r:RibbonWindow>

Anyone have idea why that might be happening? The RibbonControlsLibrary is in my references, everything works fine and the ribbons come up in the blue theme until I try to switch to black or silver, then I get the exception.

Answer 1

Resources that are specific to a theme are kept in a resource dictionary with a specific file name. These files must be in a folder named Themes that is a subfolder of the folder that contains the control.

See this MSDN article for more details.