I want to know if there is a way to link text boxes in PowerPoint in a similar fashion as Excel so that when I update one text box (for instance, changing the title of the presentation), the other linked text boxes will update by themselves. The purpose is to avoid having to go through the whole presentation to change manually every relevant slides. I don't think there is a build in function but I am fairly new to VBA in PowerPoint (have some experience with Excel already). Any input is very much appreciated, thank you!
I'm trying to use Excel to create AutoCAD drawings. I have a list of product numbers and I'd like to use VBA so that upon hitting a button it will find a block or a drawing file of every product on the list and paste them into an AutoCAD drawing (to a specific point would be a bonus).
So far I've found code that will read from two columns in Excel and will plot a polyline in ACAD using those columns as coordinates. It's very simple but not exactly what I want. Does anyone have suggestions or example code that does something similar? I've found some online using the "ThisDrawing." object but Excel isn't recognizing that so I've reached a stand still. I have all day tomorrow to work on it, so I'll be doing a lot more searching, but any help is definitely appreciated. Thank you
Autodesk provide free downloads on their website so that you can add the VBA IDE into AutoCAD.
Then, inside the AutoCAD IDE you start a new VBA project.
Add a reference to your Excel library so that you can read the Excel spreadsheet.
You need to look up on:
ThisDrawing.ModelSpace.InsertBlock
In the AutoCAD VBA manual. It tells you what various parameters. But they are straightforward - origin, scale, rotation, path to block.
When you call the InsertBlock routine it will create a AcadBlockReference object. You can do any further customization on that object.
I use OpenXml for creating custom powerpoint presentation in this way: I put a keyword on the presentation, I found it during process with OpenXml and change the text value. Everything work fine but the fit option doesn't work at first.
The text box has options "Autofit: Shrink text on overflow; Wrap text in shape: On"
After my process, the new text appear on the right place but the autofit is not done, I need to click on the text box and make a input for see the autofit work. I think that PowerPoint only check option after a modification.
What I want is the autofit option is called at the end of the process. Can anyone help me?
I hope you understand what I want to do.
Thanks.
It's not possible using just OpenXML. The <a:normAutofit/> tag is used by a client application, such as PowerPoint, to render the text larger or smaller, as needed. OpenXML doesn't actually render anything, so until the client does, it will just read the text as if it is not auto-fitted.
There are a few options to think of to control this - none of them great however. One would be to use VSTO or VBA in PowerPoint to check all shapes on PPTX open and if they have a AutoFit tag, to re-render them. A second way would be to do all the font measurements yourself based on the shape's width & height and then set the font scale to the appropriate percentage. Another would be to make a textbox large enough to fit the largest amount of text you will ever insert and then turn autofit off.
Sorry this doesn't really help you immediately. I've done tons of research on this particular subject and it's all bad news.
I'd like to extract all of the information (formatted text, images, etc) from powerpoint slides into a flowing, readable (MS Word-style) format.
I'm not interested in keeping the slide concept at all--think of taking class slides from a college course and batch converting them all into one collective study guide.
I can't find a way to do this within powerpoint (though if you know of one, please share!) and,
I don't have experience scripting Office apps. Is this kind of thing easily done? Does this kind of script already exist somewhere?
Clarification:
In an earlier version of this post, I used the word "flowing" to refer to a slide-free (MS Word-like) format. This does not, however, refer to the actual formatting of slide content. So keeping bullet lists, etc. is fine and even desirable.
I don't see this being a simple task. College professors use a format of either "TITLE: BULLET POINTS OR IMAGE" or "EVERY WORD I'M ABOUT TO SAY" for their slides in my experience, and you're just not going to get flowing, readable text from the former no matter what you do. For the latter, you've already got your text, you just have to copy it to another document.
I think you might as well just open the PowerPoint, select all the text, and copy+paste into Word/Publisher/InDesign/your favorite page layout program. You'll have the same effect and the same amount of editing after the fact except without all the hassle of writing a program to do it for you.
Doing a Print operation to a PDF with the N-up options might be a good solution for handouts if that's all you need. You could expand the idea and condense ALL the slide decks into one, get it printed (with N slides per page and the note space next to it) and bound, and voila, instant study guide. I've seen that, and then you get options for note taking.
More power to you if you're doing this just because you can - don't let me stop you. There is much good learning to be had that way. You might want to look into writing a program using the Microsoft.Office.Interop namespace in .NET (starting at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772069.aspx ), or perhaps look on CPAN ( http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&query=powerpoint ) and do it with Perl! There are lots of ways to do it, but you've got to be up for the challenge.
Text is fairly simple to extract, but what text do you want? The text from the title and body text placeholders only? File, Save As, and choose to save the outline.
The other text on the slide? That can be pulled out to a text file programmatically, but in what order? Suppose you have a complex diagram with text callouts. Extracting the text is going to give you gibberish. There's no obvious/meaningful order to the text other than what the human viewer supplies by noting that "Ah. The arrow next to this bit of text points to the fribulator sub-assembly, so must relate to it in some way." Try doing that in code. ;-)
You could give the author a way to sort the text into reading order so that the code knows what order to extract it in, but that would require a fair amount of work on the part of the author.
If you can be certain that all of the content is in title+bullet form, no worries. Otherwise, you'd have to be able to articulate exactly what you want extracted, in what form and in what order before you could get anywhere with this.
MS Word-style is not only readable, but writeable as well (which was not specified in your requirements). If you want a read-only guide, PDF is your natural choice (either through Acrobat Distiller or LibreOffice). Combine individual Acrobatted presentations with PDFtk, or Acrobat or Foxit and you're good to go without any programming at all.
"Is this kind of thing easily done?" - Yes, your humble servant did a couple of similar scripts ages ago (extracting enhanced metafiles from Powerpoint slides).
"Does this kind of script already exist somewhere?" - Yes. Probably at hundreds of places, but not sure if any of them get posted to the 'Net. All things considered think you'd be better off learning some scripting and macro programming on your own, since a ready-made script may be not quite fit for your needs - and to understand and rewrite it you'd need more time than to code & debug from scratch.
Since you mention that title+bullet form is ok, open the file, choose to save as and pick Outline as the save-as type.
I think you could parse through the PowerPoint file for formatting, text and pictures. There are Visual Studio namespaces available for such a task. You open the file, parse through it and make Word file from these. Complicated work, as you would have to consider type of elements and their position, you would have to use a temporary structure for each slide.
Have a look at this sample code :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/gg278331.aspx
How to: Get All the Text in All Slides in a Presentation
Basically, using c# and openXML SDK 2.0, it loops through all the slides in the presentation, and then adds each text in every slide into a string builder. You can write out the result into a text file if you like (modification required).
Recommendation: <25 oct 2012>
For your study guide, maybe you could extract all the text in each slide, and dump those text programmatically (by adding that function into the sample code above while it's iterating the slides) into the "Notes" section of each slide. With that, you can print it in Notes Page view. You'll get the entire slide image at the top half of the page, and the actual slide texts at the bottom of it in the Notes Page view. It sure beats trying to copy and paste all the text from the slide into the notes section. You can even print it 2 slides per page, as small text would not be an issue inside the slide's image, and diagrams would still be visible more or less.
Unfortunatly, this method works for simple standard slide format ... meaning, it's OK if your slides just have a title, and a center text box with all the bullet points... any complex slide layout (maybe text boxes scattered everywhere) will come out in non-order and will be confusing. But at least you can still look at the slide image above to make sense of it :)
I'm loving the added Wireframe template and corresponding shapes in Visio 2010. One thing I can't seem to find though (not in Visio, Office help or using Google) is a good way to draw tabular controls.
The only built-in shape that comes close is a List Box of which I can link several together. However this has several disadvantages as this leaves me without "rows" in my table.
Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to do this? I'd prefer a shape that is aware of the Visio2010 'theme' stuff, but at this point any quick way to draw a grid in a wireframe would be much appreciated.
PS. Searching for shapes on "table" gives me lovely picnic-table-shapes but no usable grids. Searching for "grid" gives me one or two shapes which aren't particularly helpful either.
I find Excel a good way to manage grids in Visio. You can easily add and remove columns, manage formating etc.
In Visio 2010 go to Insert -> Object -> Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
Is was looking for the same and found a way:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/using-shapes-to-create-tables-in-visio-HA001182242.aspx
So you have to search in the stencils "Charting shapes" to find the grid.
Still not that intuitive to work with, but will do.
Insert->Shapes->More Shapes->Charting Shapes->Grid
If we are looking for Visio Stencils for Grid/Table, a great resource can be downloaded here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/about/stencils/
Too bad no one had a solution. I'll mark this response as an answer to my own question then.
The answer to my problem (for so far I could find) in fact then seems to be that you have to work around this omission in Visio by either:
using linked "List box" shapes
use one of the (rather crappy) table shapes you can search for and find online
use a screenshot (or something alike) from another program
If anyone ever lands at this question with a better workaround or even a real solution please be sure to add it.
I use Visio to design wireframes. When I need datagrids or tabular data, I end up using Excel to design a grid with some data and formatting (fonts, size, border, etc.) Then I select the grid in Excel, copy it to clipboard and then Paste Special in Visio and select Image. Not perfect but works for me.
Create the desired table in Excel. Simply copy and paste special as Microsoft Excel Worksheet, and you can then click into it and do whatever you want.
Tip: Color your grid before copying it so that you don't see the Visio gridlines. Looks much nicer on-screen!