Android : Get view Reference to a Menu Item

You can achieve this by providing your menu item with an actionViewClass property in xml and then you will be able to get the pivot view u wanted. The code would be something like this

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_find"
    android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
    android:actionViewClass="android.widget.ImageButton"
    />

In your OnCreateOptionsMenu do this

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.menu_search, menu);
    locButton = (ImageButton) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_find).getActionView();
    locButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            createPopup();
            mQuickAction.show(v);
        }
    });
    return true;
}