In my Powerpoint have images that are linked to a folder. I need to send this to a user that does not have access to the folder. I need the images to retain the current content.
I have tried to manually copy and re-paste as image AS PICTURE then send the PowerPoint, this works and this retains the content and date setting in the images.
How could I programatically do this as I have 32 PowerPoints?
For distributing a presentation, I think you probably have the best solution already, but here's another that'd be useful in some circumstances.
PowerPoint will nearly always create fully pathed links, but if then link is to just the filename, no path, it'll (generally) look in the same folder for the image as the PPT/PPTX itself.
So if you're willing to distribute the linked images as well as the PowerPoint file and can get the recipient to put them all together in one folder, all you need to do is set the linked picture's .LinkFormat.SourceFullName to just the original image file name, sans path.
Obviously, this won't be as simple to distribute, but since it changes nothing about the picture but the link path, it retains any animations, alt text, tags or other unusual formatting settings you might have applied to the image.
The other, perhaps simplest, trick is to choose Link & Embed rather than just Link when inserting the image. PPT will then update the image in the presentation when the original image on disk changes, but uses the embedded copy if the link is broken.