How to open embedded excel sheet in Powerpoint presentation using c#

Question

I have a powerpoint slide in which an embedded excel object is present, which is embedded in the following way: insert-object-create from file-browse-display as icon. I'm trying to open this excel sheet programmatically using c#. The problem I'm facing is that I'm receiving the error: "Unhandled Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: OLEFormat (unknown member) : Invalid request. The window must be in slide or notes view. at Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.OLEFormat.Activate()" I have tried changing the viewtype to slide as follows: presentation.Application.ActiveWindow.ViewType = PowerPoint.PpViewType.ppViewSlide; But this doesn't seem to help and I'm receiving the same error.

`

Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Application PowerPoint_App = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Application();
                Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Presentations multi_presentations = PowerPoint_App.Presentations;
                Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Presentation presentation = multi_presentations.Open(@"D:\test.pptx");
foreach (var item in presentation.Slides[1].Shapes)
                    {
                        var shape = (PowerPoint.Shape)item;
if(shape.Name.Contains("Object")) {
 presentation.Application.ActiveWindow.ViewType = PowerPoint.PpViewType.ppViewSlide;
                presentation.Application.Activate();
                presentation.Application.ActiveWindow.Activate();
 shape.OLEFormat.Activate();
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook wb = (Excel.Workbook)shape.OLEFormat.Object;
}
}`

This is the code which I'm using. Could anyone please help me on this. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It makes the job simple while working with clean presentations using Office.Interop lib. But it gets tricky when we try to access and edit OLEObjects in the presentation.

Try this!:

PowerPoint.OLEFormat ole = shape.OLEFormat;
ole.Object.Activate();
Excel.Workbook workbook = ole.Object;

this will create a workbook instance. Note: OLEFormat.Object is dynamic type, no need of type cast the object. but yes you need handle Error when the type cast fails.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.