With PowerPoint 2016 or later, charts appear slowly when switching slides

Problem

When I switch to a slide that contains many charts, the charts first show as gray preview images before they appear one by one.

The issue does not occur with PowerPoint 2013 and earlier versions. With PowerPoint 2016 and later versions, the issue only occurs in Normal view. The Slide Show view is unaffected.

Cause

The behavior can be reproduced with plain PowerPoint charts inserted from PowerPoint > Insert > Illustrations > Chart. Insert several charts to make the behavior easy to spot.

We filed a case with Microsoft. Unfortunately, Microsoft informed us that this behavior is by design and is not expected to change. Microsoft explained as follows:

• Embedded objects, e.g. charts, have to be checked by the document inspector for security issues.
• In the past, this check occurred upon opening of the presentation, leading to slow load times if a presentation contained many objects.
• Starting with Office 2016, the object security check happens on slide switch instead. This improves initial presentation load times at the expense of the preview images appearing on slide switch.

If your company has a Microsoft Office Support contract and you want to contact Microsoft to ask for a fix, you may refer to Microsoft case number 117110917129807.