Excel to PowerPoint Automation - Generate PPTX and PDF

Introduction

Excel to PowerPoint automation is a useful tool for businesses that need to quickly create professional-looking presentations from their data. This type of software allows users to easily populate their Excel spreadsheets into PowerPoint templates, saving time and effort. With this automation, users can quickly create dynamic presentations with up-to-date data without having to manually transfer the information from one program to another. Excel to PowerPoint automation software also helps reduce errors and ensure accuracy in the presentation's content.

It can be used for a variety of tasks such as creating proposals, financial projections, financial reports, and visualizations.

Automating Excel to PowerPoint is necessary when your presentations require the population of a large amount of Excel sheets to create charts and graphs, and formatting of text and tables in the slides.  Later in this article, we will explore several common methods to achieve this goal.

How do you Automate Excel into PowerPoint

There are many ways to automate Excel to PowerPoint. Using VBA macros is the most popular way. However, using VBA is quite an arduous task. It requires knowledge of both VBA as well as Powerpoint and its API to develop automation.

1. Macros are embedded in the files, and hence there is an added security risk, especially when working with external files that aren't always screened.
2. Non-technical people on your team will struggle to get it to work for them, making the entire process of automating Excel to PowerPoint more complex.
3. Macros have to be manually edited in case of any data movement, thus making it imperative you set the correct instructions and access rights for people using them. It can be critical in case of sensitive or confidential documents.

EDOcGen is a DIY document generation software for automating Microsoft PowerPoint generation from Excel data. Business users can use existing templates and Excel files as-is without any modifications. All you need is basic knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, it's an API-first product and developers can easily integrate with REST API for PPTX automation.

How EDocGen Automates Excel to PowerPoint

The system auto-populates the dynamic text, images, and table fields, etc. in the template with Excel data. Incorporate appropriate dynamic tags into your PPTX template to instruct the system on the specific location and content placement of Excel data within the template.

Text: In your PowerPoint template, add {tagName} for the dynamic text field, which would be filled with Excel data. It's best to keep the tag name consistent with the Excel heading.

Images: Similarly, add {%imageTagName} wherever you need Excel data to populate images in the template. You can populate images that are uploaded into the system or have image URLs in Excel data. 

Tables: {#tablename} is the tag for adding tables. The table columns automatically get populated with Excel data.

Conditions: You can show or hide based on conditions. Below are example conditions.

{#title == "ppttest1"}
	First Presentation
{/}
{#title == "ppttest2"}
	Second Presentation
{/}

{$count}

After adding dynamic field tags, upload the template to the system. The system allows for the creation of presentation slides from Excel data in a few simple steps. It would keep the destination theme and create title slides and individual slides exactly as in the template.

Step 1: Excel File Population

Use the Generate Button from the document template to upload your Excel file. Drag and drop the Excel file, containing the data in the dialog box. Thereon the system provides the option to choose the respective sheet from which you wish to populate the data and its orientation. Because the system gives you the flexibility to select the vertical or horizontal orientation, it's easy to adapt to your individual choice anytime.

Step 2: Map Fields

Once you have selected the orientation, then the system auto-maps Excel headers to PowerPoint dynamic fields, if the names match. Otherwise, you can manually map them.

Step 3: PPTX Document Generation

Select PPTX/PDF from drop-down menu as the output and click the generate button. In the case of bulk files, you'll get the result in a zip format. Unzip all files to get access to PPTX files.

Unique Features

1. It is an API-first product. You can integrate it with your databases, CRMs, and other enterprise systems to create PPTX documents in bulk or on demand.
2. One of the fastest systems for generating PowerPoint slides.
3. Not only do you generate but share them multiple channels including email, cloud storage, etc.
4. Out-of-box integration with all major single-sign-on solutions.

Conclusion

It is an API-first product and easily integrates with your other systems and processes for PowerPoint automation. Also, it has multiple out-of-box integrations with email, cloud storage, and e-sign providers. It's quick to set up and get going. Users also have the option to generate in PDF file format.

If you are looking for Excel to PowerPoint automation, then go for a software tool like EDocGen that not only ticks all the boxes when it comes to the benefits of automating but is an equally comprehensive tool with functions that save time, reduce cost, and builds on excellent user experience. JSON and XML files also can be utilized for the creation of PowerPoint slides.

Book a demo to see how it works.