Pasting Excel data in to PPT in 2 different ways - Pros and Cons

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi,

I havent tried out the following. Before doing it wanted some ideas on the
pros and cons.

Im pasting some excel data (let's say 5 rows and 6 columns) in to a
powerpoint slide as a OLE so that from within powerpoint one can edit the
excel data.

The excel data is in a spreadsheet called "Master" workbook and since it
contains lots of other spreadsheets and data which are not needed in the PPT
Excel OLE, so I would use Jon P's method of copying just the 5 rows and 2
columns from master workbook and then programmatically create a new workbook
in excel, then paste special values of the copied data in to new workbook
and then copy the relevant region from the new workbook and go to the Open
PPT presentation (Basically its a TEMPLATE kind of PPT file), Slide 4 and do
a paste special of the data in Excel format.

The above needs to be done for 500 or so related presentations. Only the
data range will change.

My doubt is rather than pasting in to PPT as a OLE each time, what if I have
a blank excel worksheet object in my TEMPLATE slide itself and each time
when i want to paste data from excel, i would programmatically do a copy of
relevant data from excel and then go to the TEMPLATE slide 4, then ACTIVATE
the already existing excel worksheet object in PPT and paste the data there.

a) What would be the essential difference between the above 2 methods. I
think time-wise later method might be better because TEMPLATE will already
have a blank excel worksheet, so it will not have to be created and so on.
Is that true?
b) I think that the former method would/might not be good because each time
when I create the OLE object in PPT its position/size etc will have to be
taken care of, while in later method those might not be an issue. Is this
true?
c)Are there any other noticeable/subtle differences in the end OUTPUT
between the 2 methods.

Please elaborate on the same if possible.

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

My doubt is rather than pasting in to PPT as a OLE each time, what if I have

a blank excel worksheet object in my TEMPLATE slide itself and each time
when i want to paste data from excel, i would programmatically do a copy of
relevant data from excel and then go to the TEMPLATE slide 4, then ACTIVATE
the already existing excel worksheet object in PPT and paste the data there.

This makes sense. I can't see any disadvantage to it, and on the positive
side, it means that to change the formatting of the data, all you need to do is
change it in the existing Excel OLE shape in the template.

And as you say, putting the object in the template will save some time.
On the other hand, you'll need to Activate the existing shape, which also takes
some time. I'd run some tests on typical hardware to be sure.

c)Are there any other noticeable/subtle differences in the end OUTPUT
between the 2 methods.

You end up with the same thing in either case, so I doubt it.

 

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi Steve,

Thnx for your advice. Would run some tests in the coming days to see whether
there are any differences.

Regards,
Hari
India

 

[brian]

Hari,
I deal with this problem all the time. I do it Jon's way. Actually, he
does it my way, which is really Excel MVP Rob Bovey's way.

And we use Insert Object rather than copy and paste for some other
reasons that make it more reliable.

Another trick I use (when these charts are going to be updated
periodically) is to tag the inserted shape with .top and .left values
and then when inserting next time, I just search through all shapes on
all slides and look for those tags, read the values, insert the new
object add the new tags and then set the shape's position to the new
values and then delete the first shape.

Very efficient and not hard to code.

Brian Reilly, PowerPoint MVP