Clarification on Supported PowerPoint Versions for IguanaTex (macOS)

[johannahaffner]

I am experiencing an issue while using IguanaTex on macOS. Specifically, I'm encountering runtime error '5' (Invalid procedure call or argument) when trying to generate even simple LaTeX content through IguanaTex in PowerPoint.

Environment: macOS version: 14.7 (23H124) (Sonoma) PowerPoint version: 16.89.1 (24091630) IguanaTex version: v1.61

Problem: I have tried running a simple LaTeX example such as Hello World, but IguanaTex returns runtime error '5'. I've attempted various troubleshooting steps, including:

• Reinstalling IguanaTex.
• Ensuring that Ghostscript is correctly installed and path is what is expected, repeated custom installation of MacTex
• Running commands manually to ensure that pdflatex and Ghostscript work as expected.

Powerpoint does not have Full Disk Access on my system, but that is also something I would like to avoid. As a next step, I was considering building from source.

Questions:

• Supported PowerPoint Versions: The documentation states that IguanaTex supports "PowerPoint 2019 or Office 365." However, I found that version numbers for PowerPoint across versions (2016 to 2021 and Office 365) are often listed as 16.x. Could you please clarify which specific versions or build numbers of PowerPoint (e.g., Office 365) are supported?
• Additional Debugging Recommendations: Are there any additional debugging tools or logging options available that might help further isolate this issue? Any help or insight into the exact versions of PowerPoint that work well with IguanaTex, or other suggestions, would be greatly appreciated!

Additional Information: Output when executing commands directly in the shell:

• I can manually generate the .dvi, and from that I can generate .png and .pdf files that look as expected.
• Generating a .svg raises a warning that Ghostscript is not found, even though other steps that also rely on Ghostscript work.

• Without running commands manually, the only thing that is generated if I try to execute from within Powerpoint is the temporary .tex file.

Thank you very much for your time and for maintaining this tool!

[Jonathan-LeRoux]

Hi,

I'm not aware of any version of Office 2019 or 365 that is not compatible. For 2016, it's specified in the Readme.

I agree that I should really have a dedicated section in the readme on how to debug, as I have probably written these instructions in 50 different messages😅 In the meantime, you can find instructions in this comment for a recent issue.

[johannahaffner]

Thanks, I will try the VBA editor breakpoints! :)

[Jonathan-LeRoux]

Any luck?

[johannahaffner]

I couldn't get anything to show up in the Visual Basic Editor and then gave up.

I'm happy to try again sometime next week!