I am new to Powerpoint but I have a lot of experience with Excel and VB
macros. I would like some advice about the best way to proceed to meet
the requirements below.
>From a web application, I want to run a report. The data is complex and
the final content is generated via Java on the server. I want to
populate a Powerpoint presentation with this content and present it to
the user.
Issues:
1. Many charts in the presentation are complex, and beyond the
capabilities of Powerpoint. They are currently created in Excel and
manually pasted as images into the presentation. This needs to be
automated in some form.
2. Since the data will be computed in a web application, I need an
automated way of getting the data into Powerpoint (populating charts
and inserting blocks of text). I don't see a "web query" facility in
Powerpoint like in Excel, or any way that I can see to retrieve
external data from a url and apply it to the presentation.
This is my thought so far. The process could work something like this:
1. Generate the report content in the java webapp code.
2. Output an HTML page containing javascript code and all the data.
3. The code instantiates a Powerpoint.Application object via ActiveX
(fine in this environment) and opens a ppt file from a URL on the
server.
4. The file on the server is a "template" with everything laid out and
ready to be populated. All charts are embedded Excel Chart objects.
5. The javascript code takes the content in the HTML and the activeX
object and populates the content.
6. Charts are populated by accessing the Excel.Application objects
within the powerpoint presentation, and populating the data sheets
which drive the charts.
7. The presentation is fully populated and made visible for the user.
This sounds very complex to me, but it seems like it might actually
achieve my goal.
Is there a better way?
PS: Users will have Office 2003 and ActiveX enabled, but should not be
required to do any special configuration in powerpoint or excel,
install third party charting tools, etc.
Thanks!
Matt Kruse
http://www.mattkruse.com/
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