Linking placeholders

Question

Hello there,

I am creating a PowerPoint template for the purpose of creating multiple presentations with similar layout.

All slides except the first contains a header. In a presentation consisting of let's say 400 slides, I want for example the slides 6 through 32 to show the same text in the header, while slides 33 through 50 shares the same header content and so on.

Long story short, I want to be able to group the slides by the header.

It feels like a waste of time to type the same text in numerous slides and I am looking for an easily adoptable sollution (like macros) because I'm creating the template for others to use.

Also I want to add a hyperlink to every header by default that redirects to the first slide with the same header (the first slide with a new header is always the same slide template)

Is any of this possible in any way (All tricks are allowed)?

Answer 1

If you used the new Sections feature in PPT, it should be possible to pick up the section names and pop that text into a header shape (not PPT's own header/footer).

You'd need to set the code up so that it could be re-run whenever you add new slides or move slides from one section to another or change section titles and such.  All quite do-able.

The hyperlink bit is a bit trickier but also do-able.

Unfortunately, there's no practical way to distribute macro code in templates or presentations.

To make it possible for your users to run the code, you'd need to turn the macros into an add-in and distribute that to them so they can install it.  That'd enable you to give them a button or two on the ribbon that they could click to make the magic.

Are you moderately fluent in VBA?  Or are you getting your feet wet in it and want to jump in knee-deep as a learning project?  If so, it might be reasonable to talk the project through a bit further here; then you could come back for advice with specific hitches that you run into as you write the code yourself.

If you just need someone to write it for you, a couple of us do that for a living.  I'd be happy to talk with you further about it offline; you can email me at steve at-sign pptools dot com or contact me via my site:  http://www.pptools.com  There's a contact link on the left of pretty much any page on the site.