Creating shapes in similar fashion as with autoshape dropdown - vba

Question

I would like to make a macro in Powerpoint that enables me to create shapes in a similar fashion as when you select the autoshapes in the autoshape overview (i.e. once you call the macro you have a possibility to click to set the coordinates and subsequently you drag and click to set the width&height). Also, I would like to give it pre-set cosmetic characteristics (e.g. certain inner margins, fill color, border style and transparancy), which will be defined in the vba code.
I am aware of .addshapes(), however, this requires coordinates and height/width as input. Moreover, I have not find any posts / documents on vba to create shapes without defined coordinates and height/width.
Anyone some ideas on how to tackle this challenge?
Many thanks in advance!
Sofar

Answer 1

Building on what John Korchok suggested, here's code that retrieves the just-drawn shape so that your code can resume and manipulate it...
Sub testAppComBars()
Dim SHP As Shape
Application.CommandBars.ExecuteMso ("ShapeFreeform")
Stop
Set SHP = Selection.ShapeRange(1)
With SHP.Fill
.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(192, 0, 0)
.Transparency = 0.75
End With
End Sub
I would hope there's a more elegant solution than using Stop to pause code execution while the user picks the shape's location (or in this case, draws a freeform polyline/polygon), but that's all I could come up with off the top of my head.

Answer 2

I was fascinated by this problem and think this might help you.
Consider that when you draw a new autoshape, you have changed the window selection, and created a new selection ShapeRange with exactly 1 item (the new shape).
So by setting a WindowSelectionChange event, you're able to apply any formatting you wish at the time of creation.
First create a class module called cPptEvents with the following:
Public WithEvents PPTEvent As Application
Private Sub PPTEvent_WindowSelectionChange(ByVal sel As Selection)
On Error GoTo Errhandler
Debug.Print "IN_PPTEvent_WindowSelectionChange"
Dim oShp As Shape
If (ActiveWindow.ViewType = ppViewNormal) Then
With sel
If .Type = ppSelectionShapes Then
If .ShapeRange.Count = 1 Then
Set oShp = .ShapeRange(1)
If oShp.Type = msoAutoShape Then
If oShp.AutoShapeType = msoShapeOval Then
If oShp.Tags("new_oval") = "" Then
oShp.Fill.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 0, 0)
oShp.Tags.Add "new_oval", "true"
End If
End If
End If
End If
End If
End With
End If
Exit Sub
Errhandler:
Debug.Print "Error: " & Err.Description
End Sub
This checks the selection every time it changes. If there's an oval selected, it looks for the "new_oval" tag, which will not exist for a newly created shape. In that case, it applies a red fill, although of course once you get to this point you can call an entirely different sub, pass along the shape, and do whatever you want formatting-wise to it.
By adding that "new_oval" tag, you ensure that the formatting will not be applied to an oval that hasn't been newly created. This allows the user to make manual changes to the formatting as needed -- otherwise you're just resetting the formatting every time the user selects an oval.
Note that for the _WindowSelectionChange event to be running in the background, you have to call this at some point:
Public MyEventClassModule As New cPptEvents
'
Public Sub StartMeUp()
Set MyEventClassModule.PPTEvent = Application
End Sub
You can include that one line from StartMeUp above in whatever Ribbon_Onload sub is triggered by your addin, if you're making a new addin ribbon.
With this solution, you don't even have to give the end user a special button or set of tools to create the shapes that are being formatted. It happens invisibly whenever the user draws a new shape from the native PPT tools.

Answer 3

This will put your cursor in drawing mode to draw an oval. After running, you may have to click on the slide once, then the cursor will change shape and you can draw an oval:
Sub DrawOval()
Application.CommandBars.ExecuteMso ("ShapeOval")
End Sub
Other commands to substitute for ShapeOval:
ShapeRectangle
ShapeElbowConnectorArrow
ShapeStraightConnectorArrow
Get the full list in Excel spreadsheets from Microsoft Office 2016 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers
Look for the powerpointcontrols.xlsx file and search the first column with "shape"
There are 173 shapes in the menu, so you have a lot of macros to write.