How do I Recover my Missing VSTO Add-In Ribbon

i'm completely stumped with this one. I was busy debugging my Visual Studio 2022 VB.Net based VSTO Excel Add-In, which incorporates a Ribbon, when the designer threw an error, and now the ribbon design object has disappeared from my Project. The code file associated with the ribbon is still in the project. The ribbon must still be about in the background somewhere, because when I compile and run in debug mode, the ribbon is displayed as expected as in:

However I am unable to access the Ribbon designer to make alterations. Help...!

Kind Regards Paul.

You need to rollback to the latest stable version if any source control tool is used for developing a software. If not, I'd suggest creating a new VSTO add-in project and compare all the code with the new solution - to find out where is the difference.

Anyway, I'd suggest switching to using the ribbon XML instead. Use the ribbon designer to create the custom UI skeleton in Visual Studio and then switch to the raw XML markup so it could be under full control. Note, you can export the existing custom UI created by using the ribbon designer to the XML file. See Export a ribbon from the Ribbon Designer to Ribbon XML for more information.

If you continue going with a ribbon XML you may find the Walkthrough: Create a custom tab by using Ribbon XML article helpful.