R – How to capture a PowerPoint VSTO Text Changed Event

powerpointvsto

I'm developing a PowerPoint C# VSTO add-in. I want to be able to capture a text changed event whenever the Title text of a slide is changed.

How can I attach a custom event handler that will fire whenever the Title text is changed?

Best Solution

Two things: 1) this is in VBA, but should be easily portable to C# and VSTO, 2) The "text changed" thing is a bit tricky. I can get you as far as "are you in a Title box" - the rest is more trival. It has to do with finding original state versus any changes. Probably doable, I just haven't done it.

To hook a selection change in PPT VBA, you'll need one class and one module. In the class, put this:

Public WithEvents PPTEvent As Application
Private Sub PPTEvent_WindowSelectionChange(ByVal Sel As Selection)
    With Sel
        If .Type = ppSelectionText Then
            Dim sh As Shape: Set sh = .ShapeRange(1)
            If sh.Type = msoPlaceholder Then
                originalText = sh.TextFrame.Text
                Dim placeHolderType As Integer
                placeHolderType = sh.PlaceholderFormat.Type
                If placeHolderType = ppPlaceholderTitle Then
                    MsgBox "this is a title placeholder"
                End If
            End If
        End If
    End With
End Sub

Name the class "clsPPTEvents". Then in any module, put the following:

Public newPPTEvents As New clsPPTEvents
Sub StartEvents()
    Set newPPTEvents.PPTEvent = Application
End Sub
Sub EndEvents()
    Set newPPTEvents.PPTEvent = Nothing
    Set newPPTEvents = Nothing
End Sub

Press F5 on the StartEvents and that will enable the hook. Press F5 on the EndEvents to disable it.

Related Solutions

C# – VSTO PowerPoint/Excel Interaction

Him Manzoor,

Your question is a little open ended, and I'm not really sure what kind of PowerPoint values you are attempting to place into Excel, but you could certainly use Excel Automation to achieve your goal. For example, something like this:

void AutomateExcelExample()
{
    Excel.Application excelApp = new Excel.Application();
    excelApp.Visible = true;

    Excel.Workbook workbook = excelApp.Workbooks.Add(Type.Missing);
    Excel.Worksheet worksheet = (Excel.Worksheet)workbook.Worksheets[1];
    Excel.Range range = worksheet.get_Range("A1", Type.Missing);

    range.set_Value(Type.Missing, "Hello World");

    MessageBox.Show("Intentional pause so you can see the result.");

    // Cleanup:
    GC.Collect();
    GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();

    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(range);
    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(worksheet);

    workbook.Close(false, Type.Missing, Type.Missing);
    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(workbook);

    excelApp.Quit();
    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(excelApp);
}

In the example above, the code opens a new Excel application instance, makes the application visible (which you probably do not want to do, but can be useful when testing), opens a new workbook, and then assigns the string value "Hello World" into the cell A1 of the first worksheet in the workbook.

I don't know what kind of PowerPoint data you are retrieving, but an Excel cell can handle most standard value types such as string, double, bool, DateTime, etc.

This solution will work both with or without VSTO, and will work for Excel versions 2007 and above as well as for Excel versions 2003 and below.

Does this help get you started?

Mike

Best Solution

Related Solutions

C# – VSTO PowerPoint/Excel Interaction

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