How to simulate ThisPresentation in PowerPoint VBA

Question

I would like to be able to access the document properties of a PowerPoint add-in file (a presentation saved as "PowerPoint Add-in (*.ppa)", from some VBA code in the add-in itself.

If it helps to understand the problem, what I'm actually trying to do is read a custom document property that stores the version number of the add-in, so that I can display that in a dialog box.

With Word & Excel I can do this using ThisDocument & ThisWorkbook, both of which return a reference to the document containing the running code. However, there is no ThisPresentation equivalent in PowerPoint.

For a standard PowerPoint presentation or template, I could use ActivePresentation. However, this method won't work for an add-in.

Any ideas? Please, no suggestions about where else I should stick the version number :-)

Answer 1

Like everyone else I expected a ThisPresentation object in PowerPoint. I thought of another way to accomplish it, without a hardcoded filename. Obviously any piece of code would need to know how to distinguish between the projects. I chose to use the projectname for this (default name "VBAProject" in the Project Explorer): it is not used for anything else, no user will change it and if it is protected they can't.

Here is my code (change MyProject into your own projectname):

Function ThisPresentation() As Presentation
Dim p As Presentation

For Each p In Presentations
    If p.VBProject.Name = "MyProject" Then
        Set ThisPresentation = p
        Exit Function
    End If
Next
End Function