change keyboard shortcut by add-in for office?

Question

I'm developing an excel add-in (office 2013).

I would like to overwrite an Excel keyboard shortcut.

For instance, ctrl+e must now center the text in a cell.

Where do I start? I can't find it in the interop documentation.

Answer 1

Well, there is no pure C# way to assign a shortcut to a command but I think I have just figured out a workaround.

In Excel, you can assign a shortcut to a macro. This obviously means you need to have a macro in your workbook. If you are working with interop you can create a macro programmatically and assign a shortcut to it.

Create an addModule() function which creates a standard coding module programmatically and writes code to it. Then use Application.OnKey() to assign a shortcut to that macro.

your addModule()

void addModule()
{
    VBProject vbProj = Globals.ThisWorkbook.VBProject as VBProject;
    VBComponent vbComp = 
                 vbProj.VBComponents.Add(vbext_ComponentType.vbext_ct_StdModule);
    vbComp.CodeModule.DeleteLines(1, vbComp.CodeModule.CountOfLines);

    string code = "Public Sub CentreText() \n" + 
                  "    activeCell.HorizontalAlignment = xlCenter \n" +
                  "End Sub";

    vbComp.CodeModule.AddFromString(code);
}

The code string is a pure VBA macro which centres activeCell's text horizontally.

Then anywhere in your executable code:

addModule();
Worksheet ws = Globals.ThisWorkbook.ActiveSheet as Worksheet;
Workbook wb = ws.Parent as Workbook;
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application app = 
                         wb.Parent as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application;
app.OnKey("^e", "CentreText");