VBA Form -> Update Charts

[Guest]

Hello,

I am interested in using VBA Forms in Powerpoint. I am comfortable using
Excel VBA and get by using Access VBA, but I have never used VBA in
Powerpoint. Every Month I update about 40 PowerPoint slides for a
presentation. On some slides the words will change, on others it is numbers
(such as sales values).

I would like to use Forms to ask several questions when the file is opened,
and then update the slides from the forms. In some cases, the updates may
need to be reformatted to fit the screen, is there a method to an autoformat
of this type.

Is this possible? And, Does anyone have any samples or suggestions on
getting started using forms to update PP slides on a regular basis?

Thank You,

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am interested in using VBA Forms in Powerpoint. I am comfortable using

Excel VBA and get by using Access VBA, but I have never used VBA in
Powerpoint. Every Month I update about 40 PowerPoint slides for a
presentation. On some slides the words will change, on others it is numbers
(such as sales values).

I would like to use Forms to ask several questions when the file is opened,
and then update the slides from the forms. In some cases, the updates may
need to be reformatted to fit the screen, is there a method to an autoformat
of this type.

Is this possible? And, Does anyone have any samples or suggestions on
getting started using forms to update PP slides on a regular basis?

There are two main considerations here:

1) How to do the updates in PPT

2) How to trigger the update

Let's toss 2 aside while you mull over it a bit. You can automate PPT from
within Excel, Access, VB or most other programming languages. In most of them
it's easier to fire off a process like this automatically than it is in PPT so
I'd suggest you think along those lines. Or at least give some thought to the
sequence of events you'd like users to follow.

As to the first, it might be enough to automate PPT's own Search/Replace
feature if you're just bringing in variable text. Have your code open a
"template" PPT file, save a copy of it then search for "merge fields" and
replace them with live text.

PPT doesn't have merge fields per se, but you'll want to search for text that's
delimited in some unique way. We have several addins that do this sort of
thing and use "fields" that look like :this: as the target of search/replace
operations. Alternatively, use "field" words that don't occur in nature. <g>