PowerPoint 2013 "PasteSpecial" won't embed Excel chart as OLE Object

Question

I've written a macro in PowerPoint that, as part of its process, will convert a linked chart in a PowerPoint presentation to an embedded chart by copying the source Excel chart and pasting that copied chart in as an OLE object -- the specific command is, "sldComponent.Shapes.PasteSpecial(ppPasteOLEObject)".

Until today, this has worked fine in all versions from 2003 to 2010. However, when trying to run this function in 2013/365, I keep getting a run-time error stating "The specified data type is not available" (-2147188160 / 80048240). I also notice that in the Microsoft Developers Reference webpage, "ppPasteOLEObject" is no longer listed as an acceptable datatype for the PasteSpecial method (when used with the Shapes collection).

I have found several ways to programmatically paste the chart as a picture, but whenever I click on the pasted chart and try to access the data, I keep getting the message "The linked file is not available." I want the data to be entirely self-contained so the PowerPoint user can edit it without reference to the original Excel file. Interestingly, when I stop the PowerPoint macro at the buggy line and then manually click "Paste" on the ribbon, the copied chart does paste, fully embedded with data accessible, into the active slide -- so the chart is getting copied into the Clipboard; the PowerPoint macro is simply unable to read and paste it for some reason. Even more interestingly (read: frustratingly), the PasteSpecial(ppPasteOLEObject) command will work for tables copied from Excel, i.e. cell ranges, but not for charts.

What happened? How does one use VBA code in PowerPoint 2013 to embed (i.e. insert a previously-created, self-contained Excel chart including all data right in the presentation slide) an Excel chart in the new version?

ADD: I should also note that the command used to get the chart from the source worksheet in Excel is "xlCopySheet.ChartObjects(1).Select", then "appExcel.Selection.Copy". Is the problem that the chosen Copy syntax is not capturing the entire chart including data but only the display? What is the correct Copy syntax to use here?

ADD 2: Further specification: The original macro was saved and was running with both Excel and PowerPoint in Compatibility (97-2003) mode, although the apps themselves are the 2013/Office 365 versions.

Answer 1

If you paste the chart as a "Microsoft Office Graphic Object", the chart is pasted as an Excel chart. You can format it within PowerPoint using the Excel ribbon's Chart Tools tab, which appear in PowerPoint. If you click any of the edit/select data buttons, it opens the data in Excel.

If you paste the chart as a Microsoft Excel Chart Object, it is pasted as an embedded workbook (the entire workbook, not just the chart and its data), with a new chart sheet inserted in the embedded workbook, and this chart sheet is what is visible. You need to double click to format or edit the chart, which opens the embedded workbook in Excel, and may mess up the size of the embedded object (so it's chart-sheet sized, not chart-embedded-in-the-worksheet sized) and things like font size.

If I copy the chart in Excel and use this in the PowerPoint VB Immediate Window

activepresentation.Slides(3).Shapes.PasteSpecial ppPasteOLEObject 

I get the second behavior.

You might want to try copying the chart using this:

xlCopySheet.ChartObjects(1).Chart.Copy