5

We've developed a PowerPoint VSTO add-in. To work with multiple Presentations at the same time we use a unique GUID for each presentation and store it in CustomDocumentProperties as mentioned here.

With Office 365 Microsoft has introduced a new feature in PowerPoint called design ideas. (It is the last item on the Design tab) When we use this add-in, interestingly the CustomDocuementProperties stored in the presentation are removed.

Design Ideas

It is easily reproducible with following VBA code. First, run the AddCustomProperty method and verify it with GetCustomProperty, then use the Design Ideas on a slide. After this when GetCustomProperty is called an exception is thrown.

Public Sub AddCustomProperty()
    On Error Resume Next
    ActivePresentation.CustomDocumentProperties("PresentationID").Value = "bb999da6f94c4692b31106994636d962"
    If Err.Number > 0 Then
        ActivePresentation.CustomDocumentProperties.Add _
            Name:="PresentationID", _
            LinkToContent:=False, _
            Type:=MsoDocProperties.msoPropertyTypeString, _
            Value:="bb999da6f94c4692b31106994636d962"
    End If
End Sub

Sub GetCustomProperty()
    MsgBox ActivePresentation.CustomDocumentProperties("PresentationID")
End Sub

I've found a solution for this is to use Presentation Tags instead of CustomDocumentProperties but the current codebase heavily relies on the later that's why I'm looking for other possibly easier alternatives.

Also, Can we somehow disable this feature with our add-in?

Suleman Ahmad
  • 148
  • 9
  • 1
    This seems to be a bug, and it appears to have been fixed; I'm not getting any errors in the current Insider build when I run your code then add a picture, accept one of the Designer suggestions and run GetCustomProperty again. When that fix will reach all copies of 365 is anybody's guess, though it probably will be w/in months if not weeks. – Steve Rindsberg Mar 27 '19 at 15:48
  • 2
    Here I am in Jan 2020, with exactly the same problem. Hello MS?! – dotNET Jan 14 '20 at 04:13
  • It is still not fixed in PowerPoint Version 2008 (Build 13127.20408) – Jozef Izso Sep 17 '20 at 10:00

0 Answers0