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Understanding how SlideFab works

SlideFab works in a simple but for some people surprising way. This page will explain the basic principle.

To automatically create slides with SlideFab it takes three elements

An Excel workbook

The Excel workbook contains data and calculations

A PowerPoint presentation

A template presentation which has room for information

SlideFab log

SlideFab

The SlideFab add-in is located in the PowerPoint ribbon

SlideFab manages the connection between cells in Excel and shapes in PowerPoint

With an Excel workbook, a PowerPoint template presentation and SlideFab at hand there is still an important part missing: It is the link between the presentation and the workbook. Users can create these links with the SlideFab add-in easily. SlideFab stores this linking information and further settings in the template presentation. All this information is stored in a hidden way to avoid cluttering the template slides and shapes.

This shows how SlideFab connects an Excel cell with a PowerPoint shape.
In this example a product name and its price (as highlighted) from Excel will be written to a PowerPoint template slide.

To multiply the template slide based on Excel data a loop is required

When the connection between Excel workbook and PowerPoint template through exists, SlideFab can fill in the data automatically. But wait, this is not everything. SlideFab can iterate entries from a list and fill in the data from Excel into the template slide.

This image shows how SlideFab defines the iteration loop to create the template slides for all entries in the Candidate Range which is defined in Excel
Because there are more products, the iteration loop will make sure that one product will be handled after the other.
This screenshot shows the multiplied output slides based on the Excel workbook and the PowerPoint template slide
As a result SlideFab creates one slide per product featuring its name and price.

To get a better understanding of how SlideFab works the tutorial site is a great starting point

What you learned on this page so far is not everything regarding SlideFab, of course. There is so much more to discover. The best way to understand how SlideFab works is to start using it. In order to make the start easy there are tutorials available which address both beginners and experts.