Presentations.Open Method failed for MS PowerPoint 15.0 Object Library

Question

I am calling VBA code from an Excel spreadsheet to open an existing PowerPoint file via the Presentations.Open method. In my environment I developed via Early Binding using the MS PowerPoint 14.0 Object Library and the codes run without a problem.

However, when the script was called in another machine that runs MS Office 2013 (i.e. MS PowerPoint 15.0 Object Library), a Run-time error pops up

Method 'Open' of object 'Presentations' failed

Is the Presentations.Open method deprecated in PPT 15.0 Object library? I tried searching Internet but couldn't find documentation on the change.

I also attempted to use Late Binding to see if it works, but received the same error.

Please find below the code snipnets I used (early + late binding).

Thank you very much for the help.

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Early Binding Code Snipnet

Sub EarlyBinding()
Dim ws As Worksheet
Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")

Dim PowerpointApp As PowerPoint.Application
Dim myPresentation As PowerPoint.Presentation

Set PowerpointApp = New PowerPoint.Application
PowerpointApp.Visible = True

Dim myPath As String
myPath = ws.Range("wk_dir").Value & "\" & ws.Range("ppt_name").Value

Set myPresentation = PowerpointApp.presentations.Open(myPath)
myPresentation.SaveAs (ws.Range("wk_dir").Value & "\test_earlybind.pptx")

Set myPresentation = Nothing
Set PowerpointApp = Nothing
End Sub

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Late Binding Code Snipnet

Sub LateBinding()
Dim ws As Worksheet
Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")

Dim PowerpointApp As Object
Dim myPresentation As Object

Set PowerpointApp = CreateObject("Powerpoint.Application")
PowerpointApp.Visible = True

Dim myPath As String
myPath = ws.Range("wk_dir").Value & "\" & ws.Range("ppt_name").Value

Set myPresentation = PowerpointApp.presentations.Open(myPath)

myPresentation.SaveAs (ws.Range("wk_dir").Value & "\test_latebind.pptx")

Set myPresentation = Nothing
Set PowerpointApp = Nothing
End Sub

Answer 1

presentations.Open() may fail if you pass a relative path as parameter. The reason is that PowerPoint uses its own working directory which is usually different from the working directory of the calling application.

The solution is to pass an absolute path rather than a relative one.