reading XML into Poserpoint

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charlie Justus
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Charlie Justus

How does one go about reading data from an XML file, parsing the data, and
formating the information on a Powerpoint slide? Any pointers would be
greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Charlie Justus
 
How does one go about reading data from an XML file, parsing the data, and
formating the information on a Powerpoint slide? Any pointers would be
greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

That'd take a book to answer. Can you narrow it down a bit?

This may help with constructing slides, once you have the data in hand:

Using Excel and Access data in PowerPoint Tables (by Brian Reilly and Naresh
Nichani)
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00892.htm
 
Hello Steve,

Thanks for the pointer. It comes very close to what I need - and is indeed
very cool.
What I have is a fairly basic XML file containing a number of references
with a format similar to:

<reference>
<description>foo homepage</description>
<link>http://www.foo.com</link>
</reference>
<reference>
<description>bar homepage</description>
<link>http://www.bar.com</link>
</reference>
....

We have internal web sites that point to the XML file and using a little
javascript and CSS can extract and display the information on our HTML
pages. The file can be read into Flash using Actionscript. We even have a
Framescript that can import the data into user documentation in Adobe
FrameMaker format. What I need is some way to read the data and format it
into a powerpoint slide. With the pointer you sent me, I was able to open
the file in Excel, then save the data as a .xls file, then use the VS script
to create a formatted slide. This can work, but I was hoping for a solution
where I could go directly from XML to the powerpoint slide.

Again, Thanks for the pointer.

Charlie
 
I suppose the starting point would be:

Do you want to automate this from within PPT or do you want an external
application to parse the XML and automate PPT to do the job? Something like
the MSXML dll should be able to do that, I think. (no experience of it myself,
mind)

Then, what do you want to end up with in PPT? One slide per reference or a
table with NN references per slide or ???
 
I don't suppose it really makes much difference to me whether I script this
within Powerpoint or use another application. It would work for me to be
able to use MSxml from within Powerpoint. For the output, I was hoping for 5
or 6 references per slide either in a bullet list or table


Thanks again

Charlie
 
I don't suppose it really makes much difference to me whether I script this
within Powerpoint or use another application. It would work for me to be
able to use MSxml from within Powerpoint. For the output, I was hoping for 5
or 6 references per slide either in a bullet list or table
Click to expand...

OK, so the next step would be to sketch out the general process.

Dim arrayRecords(1 to 6) as string
Open the XML file

Until we run out of XML records to process ...

For x = 1 to 6
If we're not at the end of the XML file yet
Read one record int arrayRecords(x)
Next

Add a new slide
Add a new text box to the slide
(table's a little trickier ... we can get to that later)

strTemp = ""
For x = 1 to 6
' tack the record to the end of a temp string
strTemp = strTemp & arrayRecords(x) & vbcrlf
Next

Set the text of the shape equal to strTemp
 
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