Powerpoint: codes to produce slides?

[OsakaWebbie]

Is there a way one can construct a text file such that it can be input into Powerpoint and certain text becomes the title and text blocks of a new slide?

I want to have a database (Internet-based) of information, and using dynamic queries (in my case, in PHP) pull info from it and put it together in a way that it can make new slides in a Powerpoint file that already has the master slides the way I want things to look. Is there something I can do like this (total random idea, just to help you understand what I am imagining):

  [new slide]
  [title]
  My Title
  [text]
  Text line 1
  Text line 2
  [new slide]...

If instead of plain text like above, it's something like control characters, that's fine, but binary code (like actually making a real .ppt file) would be a bit too difficult for me to do in code. So I'm hoping there's some method with a text file.

If this kind of thing is possible, then I have two questions:
(1) what should the formatting of the text file be (or point me to a resource that tells me)?
(2) how do I get Powerpoint to read my file into a presentation at a specified point (e.g. before or after the current slide)?

Thanks for any guidance you can give.

 

[PaulTEG]

You should be able to use VBA to put your presentation together from external sources

You'd probably get more assistance from the the VBA forum

In powerpoint press Alt+F11 to open the VBA environment

HTH
--Paul

 

[OsakaWebbie]

If that's the only way, okay, but I have never used VBA in Powerpoint (in fact, I'm fairly novice at Powerpoint generally), so if I can do most of the work on the other end (in PHP constructing the file), it would be easier. I'll ask over in the VBA forum if I don't hear anything else here over the next few days (I'm not in a hurry on this project). But if someone else has an idea here, I'm all ears.

I experimented with the feature that imports "outlines" that are TXT or RTF files, but it seems that contrary to the instructions in the help file, it only brings in the text set to the Heading1 style as titles, ignoring text that is in a lower level style (which the help file says would be put in a text block). But I'm sure there are people out there who are way smarter about this stuff than me... ;-)

 

[nberryman]

Try using the Word File, Send to, Powerpoint option. That should do it.



Neil Berryman
IT Trainer
neil_berryman@btopenworld.com

 

[OsakaWebbie]

I can't build a Word file with PHP code either - it's also a binary file type. I'm not going to be doing this in Word, but rather using web-based code accessing a database.