How do I GET RID OF MACROS I've added? Warning message about "this presentation contains macros"

Problem

You've added macros to your PowerPoint presentation, deliberately or not, and now you want to get rid of them.

Or perhaps you're getting a warning message about macros when you open the PPT file even though there are no macros in the file, as far as you can tell.

Solution

Here's how to rid the file of macros:

• Make a copy of the presentation to work on. It's always best to have a twin you can send in for major surgery in your place.
• Open the copy in PowerPoint and choose Tools, Macro, Visual Basic Editor to go into the Visual Basic Editor (VBE)
• There'll be a list of all open presentations and under each, a list of the modules, user forms and classes in each one that contains VBA macros. If you don't see this list, choose View, Project Explorer.
Note: The list is collapsible - if you don't see a list of modules in your presentation, the list may be collapsed. Click the icon to its left to open/uncollapse it.
• For each module, form and class in the project, right-click it (PC) or control-click it (Mac) and choose Remove from the pop-up menu. PowerPoint gives you the option to export the code to a file before removing it. Do that if you need to preserve the code. Otherwise, you don't need to.
• If there are any Slides in the project in addition to modules, forms and classes, it means that there's an Active-X control on the slide itself. It may be enough to delete the control and resave the presentation, but more likely you'll have to delete the slide entirely. Before you delete the slide, delete the Active-X control, select everything on the slide and copy it to a new slide.
• Choose File, Close and Return to PowerPoint to close the VBE. Save your presentation.
In at least some versions of PowerPoint saving from within the VBE is a waste of time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Don't trust it. ALWAYS save from PowerPoint itself, not the VBE.