PowerPoint Automation Using Excel
Assume you need to generate the same PowerPoint report each month where the slides of your report do not need to change, but only the underlying data. One way to do that, is to change numbers slide by slide and figure by figure. This can be tedious, right? Luckily, there is a more efficient way to do this.
A better way to do the job is to link an Excel file with all your data and figures into your PowerPoint. The idea being that Excel contains all the data points together in a tabular format, which makes it easier to change several data points at once (by just overwriting the file).
Excel files contain tabular data which can be created by almost every BI tool, hence, you will be updating your presentation instanously without worrying about the tool that was used to generated the data, also you can keep using all PowerPoint capabilites aside from the used BI tool.
Step 1 : Excel preparation
Prepare all your data in Excel. This seems to be a good idea for any PowerPoint project, since it gives you much flexibility for future modifications.
This includes :
- Conditional formatting.
- Cell formatting.
- Charts and graphs.
Step 2 : Move to PowerPoint
- From Excel, copy the object you want to have in your PowerPoint (ctrl + C).
2. In PowerPoint, select Paste (top left) -> paste special -> paste link -> then select Microsoft Excel Chart Object.
By doing that, any modification to the data or charts in excel will be directly seen in PowerPoint.
Now when you want to modify the whole PowerPoint presentation, it is enough to replace the excel file containing the old data by the file containing the new data and you will have a fully updated Powerpoint.
PowerPoint in this framework will serve as a pure presentation tool by which you control the replacement and size of objects, but not their values.
