title: Adding a custom ribbon tab and buttons in Sharepoint 2013
body: <p>I'm trying to figure out how to create a custom ribbon tab with custom buttons on a documents library in SharePoint 2013.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using Visual Studio 2013 Community with office developer tools and I'm running SharePoint through an office 365 business trial account.</p>
  
  <p>I've found the following tutorials which helped but ultimately I am still stuck.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/01/customizing-ribbon-part-1-creating-tabs.html" rel="nofollow">This one</a> is great but as a new Sharepoint developer I'm not sure exactly whats going on. I know I need to edit the elements.xml file but I have no idea where or what file to edit.</p>
  
  <p>I then found <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff407250(v=office.14).aspx" rel="nofollow">this one</a> which helped out a lot but still dosen't work. I followed the instructions to the letter except for the step where you create an Empty SharePoint Project. I am unable to do that because VS 2013 will not allow that unless you are deving in the same environment as the SharePoint server and because I'm running Windows 8.1 and not Windows Server I can't even install Sharepoint foundations to try this.</p>
  
  <p>Instead I just created a simple Sharepoint App in visual studio and followed the steps to create the feature and custom action but I still can't get it to work. The menu and buttons are nowhere to be seen in any documents library.</p>
  
  <p>So can anyone help point me in the right direction for creating a custom ribbon tab and buttons (or just SP2013 dev in general)? I've spent all day looking online for resources but every resource is either for a different version of SharePoint or outdated so that the tutorial is no longer applicable to VS2013 or SP2013.</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be greatly appreciated.</p>