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How to create resilient Excel models using spilling Dynamic Array Formulas for automation purposes – and not just only for SlideFab

When it comes to programming most coders or programmers accept that code and data need to be separated. “Avoiding hard-coding” is a common best practice in this regard. Unfortunately, when it comes to Excel this idea hasn’t prevailed yet. Even when it comes to VBA coding within Excel many developers still rely on intermingling code into huge XLSB files, wondering why performance and maintainability are so poor. However, this post is not about writing VBA add-ins for Excel (using XLAM files).

This post is about keeping data and calculation logic (instead of code) separate within mere Excel files. Basically an outrageous idea, as “dragging formulas” and “adapting ranges” are instantaneous associations for most Excel users once input data changes. I will explain how Dynamic Array Formulas will help to build highly robust Excel models which will adapt to changes in the raw data automatically.

Accordingly, the concepts provided here are ideal for Excel calculations that need to last, like survey evaluations or corporate reporting. Both have in common that data structure remains rather similar while new surveys or new months are just around the next corner, respectively.

Disclaimer: What you will find here is my personal opinion based on more than 10 years of Excel and VBA experience. You might have a different opinion. But maybe you will learning something new nevertheless 😉

Read More »How to create resilient Excel models using spilling Dynamic Array Formulas for automation purposes – and not just only for SlideFab
This is still picture from the video explaining the five different chart relevant Export Modes

Linking / exporting charts from Excel to PowerPoint using 5 different Export Modes of SlideFab

When creating recurring PowerPoint slides based on Excel workbooks, there are 5 different SlideFab Export Modes to choose from. This video elaborates on how to choose and employ the right Export Mode. The video shows how to set up the Excel model and the PowerPoint slide template for the use of SlideFab.

Read More »Linking / exporting charts from Excel to PowerPoint using 5 different Export Modes of SlideFab
Creating customized story flows in PowerPoint slide and presentation mass production

Using customization to individualize mass-produced PowerPoint slides

The art of creating PowerPoint presentations is topic of a whole industry: Templates, tutorials, manuals, best practices, etc. are offered to enable users to sculpture one perfect presentation. However, so much effort for one presentation does not scale well, e.g. when each country, business unit, team leader, etc needs a dedicated presentation. In such cases mass creating slides and presentations can help: Same structure but different data. In most cases the outcome is not very emotional or thrilling as titles or annotations do not reflect the message conveyed through the data. The slides tell no story. In fact, one might argue that a phonebook is more exciting. Unfortunately, the situation is as follows: One gets either customization or economies of scale.

Matrix customization vs economies of scale

However, this article is about approaches to bring more customization to mass-produced slides. Even though these tipps are meant for SlideFab 2, some will find them helpful for manual automation coding with VBA or Excel modeling in general.  So, here are some ideas which explain how to get more customization when mass producing PowerPoint slides or presentation based on Excel.

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SlideFab 2 Likert Chart Example Title page

Likert Charts mass creation in Powerpoint using Excel and SlideFab 2

There are plenty of ways to visualize results from surveys and benchmarks. A classical one is a line plot of the Likert scale (i.e. Likert chart / plot). While it is a great chart type, it is a pity that Excel does not offer it out of the box.

There are manuals on the internet available on how to build a Likert chart with Excel. However, this post explains how to mass create multiple slides with Likert Charts with SlideFab 2 for free. This can be useful in benchmarking surveys for example, where each participant shall receive a personalized result presentation.

UPDATE: There was a bug in the Excel model which led to incorrectly drawn charts. Thanks to Thomas Seitz from http://www.tsm-marktforschung.de/ for pointing this out. The example files was updated, cf. below.

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How Excel Tables exceed Named Ranges when writing legible formulas

Creating legible Excel formulas is something which is very handy, typically. No matter whether another person or oneself needs to adopt and understand an Excel file. It can be difficult to find into the logic of an old or alien Excel file: Then even plain calculations can be hard to grasp. But there are also cases where complex workbooks are easy to understand. It depends, as always:

Imagine a classical way to make an Excel file hard to understand: Adding numerous references across worksheets to single cells. This happens quite often. Even to adapt Excel users: For example, they separate calculation sheets from a parameter sheet. Conceptually, this is a good idea, but things can get messy.

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SlideFab category tree example image for the blog post

Automatically creating Category Trees in Powerpoint from Excel with SlideFab 2

This SlideFab 2 video shows how to create Category Trees automatically. A Category Tree is a structured visualization of corporate spend. It serves for quickly showing where most money goes in terms of categories, sub categories, suppliers and countries.

UPDATE September 9th, 2022. This example still uses a VBA macro to filter the pivot table. With SlideFab 2 v7.0 the VBA macros can be substituted with the pivot field filtering function.

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How to easily automate creating slides with a Powerpoint chart from Excel

UPDATE: Check out an even simpler and faster way to automate this example using linked charts based on the new SlideFab 2 v1.5. Never the less, the approach below is still valid.

This video is based on a scenario where lots of data in Excel is used to create numerous slides with each having a Powerpoint chart. SlideFab will create the slides and update the data ranges for the charts automatically.

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Table spreading across slides

This video is based on a scenario where a table with 1,000 rows in an Excel table shall be brought to Powerpoint. As 1,000 rows are way too much for a single slide, the table shall be spread across multiple slides. Let’s call this Table Spreading. In this video the Slide Loop feature will be used to create 125 slides, where each one holds a Powerpoint table with 8 rows plus header.

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Screenshot of the Loop Condition example video showing the created slides

Loop Condition Example

This video is based on the “Hello World” example and and incorporates a loop condition. The loop condition can be used to not create slides, if it does not evaluate to true. In this example the loop condition is used, to leave out every second slide. So instead of all 6 slides of the “Hello World” example only slides 1,3 and 5 (candidate values “A”, “C” and “E”) will be created. 

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A screenshot from the SlideFab 2 "Hello World" example video

Hello World Example

This brief video shows how to create a Hello World project with SlideFab 2. It will be explained how an Excel workbook can be set up and linked with Powerpoint such that multiple slides with different “Hello World” titles are created through SlideFab automatically.

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