PowerPoint Automation

[PSKelligan]

Hello All,

Using: Office 2003 Professional

Please excuse me if my post is to general, but I do not have much experience
with PP. I am well versed with Excel and Access and familliar with VBA. At
my workplace, we generate a very large PP Presentation. Slide 1 has a chart,
a spredsheet, a photo and a couple of text boxes. Slide 2 has a laerg
textbox and Slides 3-? (depending on how much data there is to display) is a
spreadsheet that may continue on for several slides. Then the next slide
starts it all over again with the same format but different data. Th total
amount of slides can be as high as 60+. As of now they are all updated by a
fleet of personnel manually.
1. I would like to know how I can automatically generate this PP Pres with
the use of Access or Excel as a data source?
2. Can slide 2 be set up to mailmerge fields?
3. Can slide 3-? be one spreadsheet and made to automatically overflow to
the next slide with field/column headers on the new slide?
4. Can the photo in in slide 1 be fed from an OLE field in access or auto
filled some other way?
5. What is the easiest way to automate the fill for my Chart as all of the
data for this project can probably be sourced from 1 table, but would require
either a filter or a query for each part. (they are currently embedding or
linking the same file over and over with a different view of the data).

Sorry if my questions are convoluted.

 

[PSKelligan]

Thanks for you response Steve,

I pretty much grasped everthing you related but the reference to Item 5: I
am not familliar with Tags or shapes although I can pretty much guess what
the are in general. could you fill me in on how they apply to this and how
to use them? Also is there a way, once I get the basic mechanics of this
thing locked down, to automaically generate this presentation with the
repeating cycle of of slides (Type 1, 2, 3-? from my first post being a
cycle, each cycle variing in length)?

Thanks again,

Patrick

 

[Pdek]

Hello,
Please don't take the following personally, I know bosses ask for some crazy
things - but do you really want to do what you desribed?

There must be a better
communications strategy for the above data than automatically putting it
into a PPT presentation and then forcing a group of people to sit down and
watch 60 slides of this. (correct me please if I am presuming too much).
Just because you might be able to do this technically, doesn't mean that
you want
to do it. This scenario might result in a classic case of "PowerPoint
Poisoning."

Again, I don't mean this personally in any way - but I think the above
scenario is
a real abuse of the technology that is not going to accomplish any real goal
that I can imagine.

I thik I can speak with at least a small bit of authority on this subject.
I teach
finance in a European MBA program, have a Ph.D. and CFA designation. My
wife is
a professional accountant who always tells me that the real challenge in her
job is not cranking out the numbers but communicating them.

So, in short, your individual request is none of my business - but as a
general
principle this type of thing looks amazingly bad.

Sincerely,
Pete

 

[PSKelligan]

I agree vocally and whole heartedly with your comment Pdek. I am a
govornment contractor and it seems the particular customers that I work for
belive that everything... and I mean everything belongs on a PPT
presentation... even if it will not be presented. I am however obliged to
help them accomplish this... What am I to do. LOL

Tahnks for the comments,

Patrick

 

[Pdek]

Ah! A request from the government - that explains it all!
Good luck and all the best,
Pete

 

[Kurt]

Also have a look at www.take-off.as/datapoint for connecting your
presentation to excel and databases of all kinds.
Kurt

 

[PSKelligan]

Steve,
Sorry for not picking up this thread again sooner. We are in the midst of
moving to Active Directory and my priorities had to shift for a while. The
thing that determines how many cycles are going to run is the amount of data
groups. We have a number of different fleets of equipment that we track the
maintenance status on. If a fleet , for a reporting period, (16th of 1 month
to the 15th of the next month) is projected to fail with regards to
maintenance, that fleet will show up in the presentation as a cycle of
slides. So, the data will continue to generate slides until the data source
runs out of failing fleets.

Thanks,
Patrick

 

[PSKelligan]

I have made up a mock-up set of slides (1 Cycle) with Fictitios info. Can I
send them to you or post them somehow?

Thanks

 

[PSKelligan]

Steve,
Here is a link to the Mock Presentation. Currently the data is manually
input but I will use an excel workbook or a query from access ((especially if
I can code the SQL statement directly into PowerPoint) whichever is easier.

http://home.ripway.com/2003-2/267/Presentation/Presentation1.ppt

Thanks,

patrick

 

[PSKelligan]

Thanks, that helps. So this presentation represents one cycle of slides
(ie,

there wouldn't be any others for this particular fleet, there'd be one set like
this for each fleet projected to fail in some way)?
Yes.

Will the layouts stay consistent no matter what (just the data changes)?

Yes, for the most part, there will however be some freetext on the Narative
(Info Paper). Hoping that part could be done in Word and joined to the
Automation.

Will the data be fairly consistent (that is, one paragraph of XX words worth of
discussion, for example; possibly no discussion but never more than 2 * XX words of discussion)?

No, The text will need to be flexible.

You might want to get in touch with Brian Reilly (one of the PPT MVPs). He >does a lot of this kind of thing. www.reillyand.com

I will check his site out. Do you have any tips on how to get started with
the tags? I do not find much comprehensive info on the web however my search
terms may not be very effecteive (May not kow enough about them to ask the
right questions). I tried 5to use the sample code on the MS website and
could not make it work. I sure hope you can get me moving in the right
direction.

Thanks,
Patrick

 

[PSKelligan]

Do you mean the "merge fields" I mentioned earlier? (Probably best not to
use

the term "tags" as it has a specific meaning in PPT VBA). (Unless you mean that
specific meaning.) (Of course.)

Actually I meant the "Tag Object" in vba. I did contact Brian and he called
me. He advised that most of my coding should be in Excel with the PPT
reference turned on. This at least gets me on the right starting block. I
understand the basics of the Tag Object as you described it but as I am not a
VBA Guru like you and Brian I am probabbly going to stumble over my syntax
and finding the right objects for a while. I suspect since this thread is
awfully long already as it is and I believe you have now got me on the right
track, I will consider this question answered. I will however look forward
to your and the other member's assistance in future threads on this project
as it progresses and I run into snags.

Thank you so much for the help on this as well as for putting me in contact
with Brian.

Big Kudos,
Patrick