Can VBA be used to switch slide masters in MS PowerPoint?

Question

My company is moving from Office 2003 to Office 2010, and at the same time, updating their corporate PowerPoint template. I have been tasked with researching whether it is possible with PowerPoint's existing object model, to write a script to deal with the following scenario:

1) In Office 2010, a user opens an old PowerPoint presentation that is based on the 2003 template

2) The user can update this old presentation by running a macro to strip out old slide masters and replace them with slide masters from the new template (2010) and then save the document - meaning that in one motion, any old presentation they choose to work on can be updated without having to start from scratch.

If anybody knows if this is possible, or has any thoughts to share on the idea it would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

This example applies the "Professional" design template to the active presentation.

Visual Basic for Applications

Application.ActivePresentation.ApplyTemplate _
    "c:\program files\microsoft office\templates" & _
    "\presentation designs\professional.pot"