Hacking the XML
And so to my favourite part! Hacking PowerPoint files to add custom protection hurdles. These solutions require no knowledge of coding and don’t require any VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). All you need is 7-Zip for Windows or BBEdit for macOS and a decent text editor such as Notepad++ for Windows or BBEdit again for macOS.
In this tutorial you’re going to see the Windows tools, but the process is similar on a Mac.
Add custom UI XML code to the pptx file to remove phone numbers uae access to various features in the ribbon and backstage. Microsoft calls this “extensibility”, the ability to extend (or reduce) the features in the UI.
Add custom XML to the slides to prevent users from being able to select objects we don’t want them to access, for example, a licensed photograph or video. What they can’t select, they can’t edit, copy or extract. Subject to the ZIP hack!
The ZIP hack: Every modern Office file is essentially a ZIP archive. All you have to do to see inside is add the .zip extension to the file and hey presto, you can see everything inside it. You can even see inside the file without renaming it if you use 7-Zip for Windows or BBEdit for macOS. The only time this isn’t available is if you’ve used one of the encryption methods above to protect your presentation.
Now – back to our hack! Firstly, let’s add some custom user interface XML. You can download the free Office RibbonX Editor or do this manually in the ZIP archive, which is a bit more involved. Here’s the editor with our pptx file opened:
Screenshot of the Office Ribbon Editor pop up
The first step is to select the file on the left and then click Insert / Office 2010+ Custom UI Part. Double-click the customUI14.xml file and then copy and paste the following XML into the right-hand pane:
Office RibbonX Editor pop up
This XML clears the ribbon, enabled the Slide Show tab, disabled several tabs in the backstage view and disabled the Save as Media… button in the content menu when you right click on a video in PowerPoint.