Disable Own Word 2007 Add-In If No Document Loaded - visual-studio

Question

I've developed an application-level add-in for Word 2007 using Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 3.5. Part of what it does is use the
Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.Selection.Range
to insert text.
However, when there is no document loaded this code fails. I could catch the exception or programmatically detect whether a document was currently open, but I think there must be an easier way...
When Word 2007 is open but no document is loaded, most of the buttons on the ribbon are disabled (that is, greyed out).
Any idea how this is achieved?
Will the add-ins hook into an event and disable their buttons accordingly?
If so, would this be the
DocumentBeforeClose
event, and could this be risky if Word is somehow opened without a document? (That is, there's no document loaded, but the event hasn't yet been triggered.)
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE:
OK, it seems like making use of the
getEnabled="MyMethod"
attribute of the XML might be the way forward, but this seems to only work for the individual controls on the Ribbon rather than the whole ribbon itself.

Answer 1

You basically answered your own question.
I could catch the exception or
programmatically detect whether a
document was currently open
Catching the exception is a bit nasty, but would work.
Programmatically detecting whether there is a document loaded is the best alternative.
And it's easy.
If Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.Documents.Count > 0 then
'at least one document is opened
end if
Can't get much easier than that.
Is there something else you were trying to accomplish with the stuff about the buttons on the ribbon?

Answer 2

Try using the DocumentChange event instead (see my answer on this thread).