How to subtract a shape from another shape

Question

How a shape can be subtracted from another shape programmatically?

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Lateef Sofi

Answer 1

Hi Lateef,

This forum is for developers for discussing developing issues about Office add-in. Based on the previews post, you were developing the VSTO add-in instead of Office-addin(apps for Office), I would like to move it to General Office Develop forum.

And for the issue mentioned in the title, did you want to edit the shape like figure below?

If I understood correctly, we can use ShapeNodes.Insert to automate this progress. And here is code sample for your reference:

Sub Test()
ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes(1).Nodes.Insert 1, msoSegmentCurve, msoEditingSymmetric, 200, 200
End Sub

You can get more detail about this method from link below:
ShapeNodes.Insert Method

If I misunderstood, please feel free to let us know.

Regards & Fei

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Answer 2

Thanks Fei,

Yes you had misunderstood it.

In powerpoint, if the parts of the two shapes are overlapping, we can select the shapes and subtract them. Suctract will remove the overlapped portion from the shapes. I would like to do this task through code.

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Lateef Sofi

Answer 3

Hi Lateef,

Thanks for the detail information for this issue.

Yes, we can use ShapeRange.MergeShapes method to automate this behavior. For example, here is a demo that making subtraction for the two shapes on the first slide.

Dim myShapreRange As ShapeRange
Set myShapreRange = ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes.Range(Array(1, 2))
myShapreRange.MergeShapes msoMergeSubtract

We can also refer to the shape via its name instead of the index of shape on the slide.

Regards & Fei

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