Thank you John, that worked to remove the images but it leaves behind the empty placeholder, a work around I've found it to drag and drop all my images into the template, then copy and paste them to a new slide with no template applied, this does not copy the empty placeholders so I end up with only the pictures.
Also I have some VBA now that does what I needed for the rest, in case anyone is curious, this works for what I needed. I'm not sure why but bottom shape works to actually delete the top shape in the slide.
Sub MOD_2___Duplicate_and_delete()
ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Duplicate
' Go to the first slide
ActiveWindow.View.GotoSlide 1
Dim slide As slide
Dim bottomShape As shape
Set slide = ActiveWindow.View.slide
If slide.Shapes.Count > 0 Then
' Identify the bottom shape on the slide
Set bottomShape = slide.Shapes(slide.Shapes.Count)
' Delete the bottom shape
bottomShape.Delete
Else
End
End If
End Sub
And then this VBA runs that 200 times - unless there's not shapes left, then it stops.
Sub MOD_3___Duplicate_and_Delete_Repeat_200()
Dim i As Integer
Dim repeatCount As Integer
repeatCount = 200 ' Change this to the number of times you want to repeat the macro
For i = 1 To repeatCount
' Call your macro here
MOD_2___Duplicate_and_delete
' Introduce a delay (e.g., 1 second) before the next iteration
Dim startTime As Double
startTime = Timer
Do While Timer < startTime + 1
DoEvents
Loop
Next i
End Sub
Thanks for the hand, seems I got it sorted though!