Copying a textrange object?

Question

Iam writing a macro to take a powerpoint textbox which is in the slide title position and convert it to a slide title placeholder. I want to copy the text and all formatting so the appearance of the slide isn't changed. I thought a quick way would be to copy the textrange object from the textbox to the title:

dim text_range as TextRange

Set text_range = ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes(y).TextFrame.TextRange

Set ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange = text_range

This produces a compile error "Invalid use of property" in the last line with ".TextRange" highlighted. Are the two types of textrange incompatible? Is there another way to do it without laboriously copying each formatting parameter individually?

Grateful for advice.

Answer 1

You need to set each line property

 With ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes.Title.Line

    .Visible = line_format.Visible

    .ForeColor = line_format.ForeColor

    .DashStyle = line_format.DashStyle

    '--- other properties here

 End With

If you want to copy all the formating from one shape to the other use:

ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes(3).PickUp

ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes.Title.Apply

Regards,

Shyam Pillai

Answer 2

Hi,

You've got it right, you just need to remove 'Set'.   

dim text_range as TextRange

Set text_range = ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes(y).TextFrame.TextRange

ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange = text_range

This should work now. However, this operation will assign the text to the  title placeholder but it will take the formating of the placeholder and not the source text box.

For that to happen use copy/paste (see below) or format the text programatically by reading the formatting information from the source textbox and applying it (See Runs: An example of it is provided here -http://skp.mvps.org/pptxp006.htm) 

Dim text_range As TextRange

Set text_range = ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes(y).TextFrame.TextRange

text_range.Copy

ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange.Paste

Regards,

Shyam Pillai

Answer 3

That's amazing! What is it actually doing? Is the chr(11) character something that gets added in copy/paste?

Answer 4

Try this:

Set text_range = ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes(y).TextFrame.TextRange

text_range.Copy

With ActivePresentation.Slides(x).Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange

    .Paste

    If Asc(.Characters(.Characters.Count)) = 11 Then

        .Characters(.Characters.Count, 1).Delete

    End If

End With

Regards,

Shyam Pillai

Answer 5

Thanks for a brilliant answer. The only problem I have is that when you paste the text range you seem to paste a CR/LF at the end of the text. I am trying to remove this in the code but haven't figured it out yet!