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PowerPoint (.pptx) files created by MacNewFile v3.1.1 cannot be opened in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac #30

Description

@yechao5150317-dotcom

Hello developer,

Thank you for developing MacNewFile. I really like the idea of creating new files directly from Finder, and the Word and Excel creation functions work well on my Mac.

However, I found an issue with creating PowerPoint files (.pptx).

Environment

  • macOS: Tahoe 26.6.1
  • Mac model: MacBook Pro (Apple Silicon, M5 Pro)
  • MacNewFile version: v3.1.1
  • Microsoft PowerPoint version: Office LTSC Standard for Mac 2024

Problem description

When I right-click in Finder and create a new PowerPoint file using MacNewFile:

Finder → New File → PowerPoint

the generated .pptx file cannot be opened by Microsoft PowerPoint.

PowerPoint shows:

"PowerPoint found a problem with content in Untitled.pptx. PowerPoint can attempt to repair the presentation."

After clicking "Repair", PowerPoint reports that some content cannot be read and removes the unreadable content. The repaired file is still unusable.

Additional information

  • Creating new Word (.docx) files works normally.
  • Creating new Excel (.xlsx) files works normally.
  • Only PowerPoint (.pptx) files have this issue.
  • The issue occurs even when creating the file on the local disk.

Investigation

I checked the source code and found that the PowerPoint file is generated by a shell script in: MacNewFileFinderExtension/FinderSync.m

The code creates a minimal .pptx package by generating XML files and compressing them into a ZIP archive.

I suspect that the generated PPTX package is missing some required Open XML components (for example slideMaster/slideLayout relationships), causing Microsoft PowerPoint to reject the file.

Suggestion

Would it be possible to replace the current PPTX generation method with copying a valid blank PowerPoint template file (.pptx) instead of generating the XML structure manually?

Thank you very much for your work. I hope this issue can be fixed in a future release.

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