Dynamic disable/enable custom context menu in Excel 2013

Question

I have an Excel AddIn. I add 2 context menu items in cell's context menu.

When you right click a cell, based on the formula of the cell, one context menu item will be disabled.

I put code for this in sheetSelectionChangeEvent

This works fine in Excel 2003, 2007 and 2010 but it does not work in Excel 2013.

Below is the code:

 private void ApplicationSheetSelectionChange(COMObject sh, Range target)
 {
     DisableMenubarsButtonsWRibbon(XLApp.Selection as Range);
 }

 public void DisableMenubarsButtonsWRibbon(Range rng)
 {
     var formula = rng.Formula as string;
     if(formula is function1)
     {
         _contextMenuItem1.Enabled = true;
         _contextMenuItem2.Enabled = false;
     }
     else if(formula is function2)
     {
         _contextMenuItem1.Enabled = false;
         _contextMenuItem2.Enabled = true;
     }
     else
     {
         _contextMenuItem1.Enabled = true;
         _contextMenuItem2.Enabled = true;
     }
 }

Answer 1

Reasons of behavior you reported:

Behavior you have reported is due to the bug of MS Excel 2013 core.

Behavior is not due to the libriaries/toolkits for creating Excel add-ins as:

• I experience the same problem with VSTO 2010 while you report your issue for ExcelDNA and NetOffice
• In both cases enabling of context menu items worked well with Office 2010 and stopped working with Office 2013.

I have submitted the defect for Visual Studio and .NET Framework area on MS Connect as I have not found where they accept bugs for Office.

As on MS Connect some times links to defects appear broken - I will add details of the defect with screenshots in the end of this answer.

Work around - to enable disable menu item

As it was stated in answer to your question on MSDN Social forum - you can control Enabled state of context menu items when you retrieve items by Caption or by Tag property:

CommandBar contextMenu = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.CommandBars["Cell"];
foreach (CommandBarControl control in contextMenu.Controls)
{
    if (control.Caption == "item caption") // Specify here caption of your context menu item
    {
        contextMenuItem = (CommandBarButton)control;
        contextMenuItem.Enabled = true; // Specify here desired value for Enabled state to be set
    }
}

In above code snipped context menu item is found by Caption - to find item by Tag replace code:

    control.Caption == "item caption"

in if condition with:

    control.Tag == "item tag"

specifying proper value instead of item tag text

Defect details

MS Connect ticket has ID 813453 and title:

Enabled state does not change for context menu items of Excel 2013 add-in created with C# .NET and Visual Studio 2012

Below are screenshots of the ticket: