Excel VBA Can't SaveAs Embedded PowerPoint Presentation in Office 2016

Question

We embed pptx files in Excel, then use Excel VBA code (like below) to open, then SaveAs the pptx file to the user's drive, then programmatically modify the pptx content based on Excel calculations.
The Excel VBA code below works fine to control PowerPoint 2010 and 2013, but no longer works for PowerPoint 2016.
Note: I have similar code for Word and it works fine for Word 2016 (and prior versions).

Sub OpenCopyOfEmbeddedPPTFile() 'works with Office 2010 and 2013, but not on Office 2016
    Dim oOleObj As OLEObject
    Dim PPTApp As Object
    Dim PPTPres As Object
    Dim sFileName As String
    Set oOleObj = ActiveSheet.Shapes("PPTObj").OLEFormat.Object 'name of the embedded pptx object
    Set PPTApp = CreateObject("Powerpoint.Application")
    PPTApp.Visible = True
    sFileName = "C:\Users\Me\Documents\testPPT.pptx"
    OleObj.Verb Verb:=xlVerbOpen 'it opens successfully
    Set PPTPres = oOleObj.Object
    PPTPres.SaveAs Filename:=sFileName 'fails here (in Office 2016)
    PPTPres.Close
    GetObject(, "PowerPoint.Application").Presentations.Open sFileName
    'code to modify the Presentation (copy of the embedded pptx) based on Excel calculations
End Sub

Error:
Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)': Presentation.SaveAs : An error occurred while PowerPoint was saving the file.

Also, the following PowerPoint VBA (not Excel VBA) works fine for normal documents (not embedded in Excel), but fails when I run it in an opened embedded pptm. Works fine in 2013 and 2010 embedded pptm's.

ActivePresentation.SaveAs FileName:="C:\Users\Me\Documents\testPPT.pptm"

Error: Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)': Presentation (unknown member) : An error occurred while PowerPoint was saving the file.

Windows OS version does not seem to matter. Does not work on Office for Mac.

Any way to resolve or workaround this error? Or is there another way to do the same thing (modify a copy of the embedded pptx so the embedded pptx is not modified)? Or does this error only occur on our Office 2016 PCs?

Answer 1

PowerPoint 2016 appears to fail when using SaveAs or SaveCopyAs against an embedded presentation.

The workaround is to open the presentation, create a new presentation, and then copy the content from the embedded presentation to the new presentation. You can then close the embedded presentation, and save the new presentation as you wish.

I've demonstrated copying the slides, but you may need to programmatically copy BuiltInDocumentProperties and other non-slide content.

Option Explicit

Sub OpenCopyOfEmbeddedPPTFile() 'works with Office 2010 and 2013, but not on Office 2016
    Dim oOleObj As OLEObject
    Dim PPTApp As Object
    Dim PPTPres As Object
    Dim PPTNewPres As Object
    Dim sFileName As String
    Set oOleObj = ActiveSheet.Shapes("PPTObj").OLEFormat.Object 'name of the embedded pptx object

    oOleObj.Verb 3
    Set PPTPres = oOleObj.Object

    Set PPTApp = PPTPres.Application
    PPTApp.Visible = True

    'We can't save the embedded presentation in 2016, so let's copy the clides to a new presentation
    Set PPTNewPres = PPTApp.Presentations.Add
    PPTPres.Slides.Range.Copy
    PPTNewPres.Slides.Paste

    'We may need to copy other things, like BuiltInDocumentProperties
    'TODO

    'Close the original
    PPTPres.Close

    sFileName = "C:\Users\Me\Documents\testPPT121.pptx"
    sFileName = "C:\users\andrew\desktop\testPPT12111-FOOJANE.pptx"
    PPTNewPres.SaveAs sFileName

    'code to modify the Presentation (copy of the embedded pptx) based on Excel calculations

    'Quit PPT
    'PPTNewPres.Close
    'PPTApp.Quit

End Sub