For programming Office Add-ins using C# 4.0, Microsoft provides two different ways of creating and/or modifying the Ribbon interface: you can use the Ribbon Designer or define the Ribbon's layout in Ribbon XML.
If you create a ribbon using the Ribbon designer, the class generated in the code behind has visibility to all the controls you've placed on the ribbon. So if I've placed a RibbonDropDown called "dropdown1", I could use the following code to add an item to it:
RibbonDropDownItem item = Factory.CreateRibbonDropDownItem();
item.Label = submatrix.Name;
item.Tag = submatrix;
this.dropDown1.Items.Add(item);
However, if you create the same Ribbon using Ribbon XML, dropDown1 or Factory aren't found ("The name does not exist in the current context").
Is there a way to access the items added to a Ribbon XML-defined ribbon in code?