Integrate Access data into Powerpoint presentation

[Tfrup12]

I have been asked to create about 20+/- powerpoint slides from customer data
contained in MS Access. I would love to be able to create the slides similar
to the steps involved in creating an Access Report. Is it possible to
publish to a PPT from a report. The slides need to be published at least
twice per month. Also, the data is structured across several tables. Any
suggestions, any best practices, would be greatly appreciated!

b.

 

[Maurice]

You migth try something different here:

First create your queries in Access which contain the data.
Drag the query from the dbwindow to an open word document
Save the word document
From within PowerPoint import the word document

It's a workaround the simple way...

 

[Tfrup12]

Thank you Maurice for your reply. I gave this a try just now, it looks like
this would work well if this were a one time event, but I am looking for a
way to update the data week to week if necessary.

Btw, I have started looking into creating an Excel Workbook then creating
data connections between the Excel file and data sources, then formating
"reports" using SUMIFS in Excel, and then linking those reports to
PPT....ugh....I just can't believe Microsoft has not integrated PPT and
Access!

Thank you,
B.

 

[Clif McIrvin]

Thank you Maurice for your reply. I gave this a try just now, it
looks like
this would work well if this were a one time event, but I am looking
for a
way to update the data week to week if necessary.

Btw, I have started looking into creating an Excel Workbook then
creating
data connections between the Excel file and data sources, then
formating
"reports" using SUMIFS in Excel, and then linking those reports to
PPT....ugh....I just can't believe Microsoft has not integrated PPT
and
Access!

I'm not a PPT user, but your question caught my eye as a topic of
possible future interest.

Are you familiar with VBA? COM Automation? I just checked (Office 2003)
and there is a complete object library for PowerPoint. It looks to me
like you can accomplish whatever you want either from VBA within PPT to
talk to Access, or from within Access to manipulate PPT.

Also, have you investigated the PPT newsgroups?

 

[Tfrup12]

Hi Clif,

I have done some VBA integration testing this morning....promising. I guess
I am concerned about the requirements for the reports, and the need to change
quickly what is presented....I guess I am still leaning towards setting up
data connections to Excel to get the data from Access over to a more ppt
friendly Office colleague.

Thank you!
B.

 

[Clif McIrvin]

Hi Clif,

I have done some VBA integration testing this morning....promising. I
guess
I am concerned about the requirements for the reports, and the need to
change
quickly what is presented....I guess I am still leaning towards
setting up
data connections to Excel to get the data from Access over to a more
ppt
friendly Office colleague.

I've never pushed data from Access to Excel; my experience all runs the
other direction. It may be that you want to use a form instead of a
report to format your data for PPT ... I'm thinking of using a
combination of queries and/or filters (either could be modified 'on the
fly' with VBA) and using a TransferSpreadsheet method to create the
Excel workbook / worksheet if that seems the easiest in your
environment.

That assumes that the transfer will be 'user driven' and the criteria
could vary from one time to the next. If this is a static process that
simply needs to be executed from time to time it could probably be built
as a query executed from a macro (or VBA user defined function, if you
prefer) and activated from Excel.

I've played a bit with Excel data connections, not enough to feel
confident in my understanding of their capabilities. I did find a query
builder; but why build (and maintain) a query in an Excel data
connection when you have all the tools already in your db?

Thank you!

You're welcome.

 

[Larry Linson]

. . . I guess I am still leaning towards setting up
data connections to Excel to get the data from
Access over to a more ppt friendly Office colleague.

It is puzzling to me why you would think that inserting an extra software
package in between PPT and Access would be more user friendly. If you have
any knowledge of PowerPoint VBA, you should very easily be able to write DAO
(or, ugh, obsolescent ADO, already replaced by ADO.NET in what Microsoft
considers the "real development world") to retrieve the data you want and
place it in the display using the PowerPoint object model. If your
competency is more in Access VBA, you'll need to learn enough about the PPT
object model. It would appear to me that using Excel would simply add the
requirment of knowing the Excel object model, but would not eliminate the
need of retrieving the data from the MDB or ACCDB database, nor knowing the
PPT object model to place it.

On the other hand, each month I need to report on a simple breakdown of
data, which I generate as output from an Access Query, copy with Snag-It
from TechSmith, http://www.techsmith.com, (not a free product, but so simple
to use that it is worth the very moderate cost, IMNSHO), and paste it in to
a Word document. On a separate, recurring monthly work item, I do the same
with output from an Access report.

There are other "screen grabbers", but I'm not familiar with them.

I've done the same with other Access Queries and Reports, into both Word and
Power Point. That is so quick, and so easy, that I haven't even considered
automating it. If it had to be done several times a day, the ROI on
automation would be better.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP

 

[Maurice]

Amen... That's why I advised to go the fast way via Word. Automating for this
specific interval would not reach for ROI.

 

[Dominic Vella]

Well, you try to use the PowerPoint object.

Dim ppApp As PowerPoint.Appication
Dim prsPres As PowerPoint.Presentation

Set ppApp = New PowerPoint.Application
Set prsPres = ppApp.Presentation.Open("c:\DefaultPresentation.ppt")
With prsPres
' Code to manipulate presentation, slide objects and
' other contents here.
End With

Or in theory, the other way around, get the powerpoint presentation to
access the database.

Dom

 

[Fred]

Not what you had in mind, but you could "print" a report as a pdf and insert
the pdf into the powerpoint.

Fred