"This application requires PowerPoint 2016 or later." version error when installing Slidewise – Neuxpower

Slidewise can only be installed on PowerPoint 2016 or later which includes Microsoft 365 (M365) subscription downloads. However, there are some scenarios where Slidewise cannot be installed and the following error will be shown to M365 installations:

There are two possible reasons for this error and the sections below describe how to resolve the issue and ensure Slidewise can be installed.

1. You are using the 32-bit Slidewise installer when you have 64-bit PowerPoint installed

The Slidewise 32-bit installer does not work with 64-bit Office installations.

To determine the 'bitness' of the version of PowerPoint you have installed follow these steps:

Open PowerPoint
Select Account from the left-hand menu
Click the About PowerPoint button
At the top of the dialog that opens, there is the long version number followed by an indication of the 'bitness' of Powerpoint.

Resolution:

Download the 64-bit installer and retry.

2. You have the incompatible Microsoft Store version of PowerPoint installed

The problem is that Slidewise can only detect versions of M365 that have been delivered by their Click-to-run process. Versions of Office that have been delivered by Microsoft Store are not supported as they are now out-of-date. These versions are usually part-installed by hardware manufacturers and are only partially maintained by Microsoft.

Do I have the 'Microsoft Store' delivered version of M365?

To determine which version of M365 you have installed:

Open PowerPoint
Select Account from the left-hand menu
Review your version on the right-hand side. The delivery method is listed in brackets after the build number see below:

Resolution: Change the Office installation delivery method to Click-to-run

In order to enable Slidewise to be installed, you need to change the installation of Office. Assuming you have an active subscription to Microsoft 365 this can be done by following these steps:

Using Windows search find and open Add or remove programs
Search the list for Office and uninstall it.
Go to www.office.com and if you're not already signed in, select Sign in.
Select Install Office from the homepage and follow the steps to install the latest version of Office.

Note: We cannot guarantee that all your custom office settings will be preserved but we have not heard of instances where these have been lost.

You should now see that your delivery method is changed to Click-to-run and you should be able to install Slidewise.

3. Your user does not have full access to your machine

Slidewise requires the current user to have full administrator permissions in order to be installed. As part of the installation process, the software checks the following registry hives to check the version of Office that is currently installed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\InstallRoot
(on both 64-bit and 32-bit systems)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\InstallRoot
(on 64-bit systems, in order to detect the 32-bit version if it's installed)

If the current user does not have permission to access the registry it will report the error as shown above. To resolve this, please check access permissions to those registry locations or ensure an administrator with full access installs Slidewise.