Development of an Excel tool for the automatic creation of PowerPoint presentations

Development of an Excel tool for the automatic creation of PowerPoint presentations

VBA programming of a PowerPoint slide generator as a Microsoft Excel add-in

As a certified VBA programmer and Microsoft partner, eWorks was commissioned by the BMW Group's Lightweight Construction and Technology Center at the end of 2019 to program an Excel add-in for generating PowerPoint presentations. The objective was to provide Excel folders with a kind of mail merge function in order to be able to create several PowerPoint slides fully automatically at the push of a button according to different compositions for different target groups - simple, error-free, lightning fast.

At the start of the project, the first task was to create and prepare the required Excel workbook (.xlsx file) so that it can be identified and exported by the Excel add-in in future. Convenient operating elements such as selection lists, validations, auto-filters etc. were integrated to make sorting, filtering and exporting a breeze.

The second step involved creating a PowerPoint template (.potx file) with the corporate design for all PowerPoint slides to be generated. Based on the BMW Group CI design, a professional PowerPoint template was created, which is used by the Excel add-in developed for creating PowerPoint slides. Various slides such as title page, intro, outro etc. represent the PowerPoint slides, whose content is filled fully automatically using placeholders. This functionality is rounded off by a program-controlled agenda update, comparable to the automatically updating table of contents in Word documents.

In the third and final step, an Excel add-in had to be programmed as a link between the Excel folder and the PPT template. Excel VBA macros came into play here for the first time, because only VBA programming allows all the required functionalities to be programmed in Excel. The functionality of the Excel add-in developed is as simple as it is ingenious: at the touch of a button, all relevant Excel lines are identified, read out, processed, formatted for PowerPoint export and inserted into a newly created catalog - title page, table of contents, content and outro, et voilà! Because not every user is a VBA expert, a "BMW" tab has been integrated into the Excel ribbon for convenient access, so that the functionality can be triggered directly with a mouse click. What often took time and nerves in the past is suddenly fun!

eWorks was able to provide its client with continuous support from the very beginning of the project: starting with the technical conception, PowerPoint template creation and Excel programming through to the handover and acceptance of the completed Excel tool. Throughout the entire process, the client was able to view the current project status and progress at any time - with the help of the tried-and-tested eWorks ticket system. In this way, communication is channeled and transparently documented for all project participants as to which subtasks have already been completed, which are still outstanding and how long the respective "tickets" have been worked on. After commissioning, eWorks, as an Excel specialist, offers its client reliable remote support for operating questions, error reports or requests for extensions to the PowerPoint tool.

Used technologies

Microsoft Office
VBA

Related references

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