How to Link Excel to PowerPoint Using Repeating Sections

In this tutorial, we will cover how to set up repeating sections in Excel and PowerPoint. Repeating sections is a key feature included in the Excel-to-Word Document Automation add-in. This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with how to link and update content using the add-in. We'll walk through the two workflows: the initial one-time setup steps and the ongoing updates you can make anytime after that.

Let's start with the one-time setup. First, prepare your Excel data table and name it. Then submit the content to PowerPoint. Then in PowerPoint, design your template slide or slides and link shapes to Excel items. Once the links are in place, designate the slide or slides as a repeating section. After that initial setup, updating is quick. Anytime your source data changes in Excel, click submit and then click update document in PowerPoint. The template slide is copied for each row in the Excel table, and linked content in PowerPoint refreshes automatically.

I'll start out by showing you how to set up this basic text product catalog. I'll first demonstrate the end result. After the Excel table and PowerPoint template slides are set up, you 'Submit Content' from your Excel table. Then in PowerPoint, you click 'Update Document'. This generates a slide for each row in the Excel document table and then updates the content.

Next, I'll show you how to prepare and name your Excel table and submit the Excel content. First, create an Excel data table and organize data so each row equals one slide. Note that you can also have multi-slide section templates. Row one contains the column headers; these item names become the link names you reference in Word or PowerPoint. Rows two and below contain your actual data, one section's worth of content per row. This simple example only contains three text items—the columns in each section: item name, description, and price. Then name the table. The name must start with your prefix plus RS_ plus your table name; in this example, r_RS_catalog. Then click ‘Submit’ to make the content available to PowerPoint.

Next, in PowerPoint, I'll show you how to design your template slide, link content in that slide, and create the section. Here is my section template slide. In this simple example, it contains three text shapes that I want linked and updated from the Excel table. The template section could contain multiple slides, and the slides can contain a lot of content.

On the ‘Link’ tab of the add-in, click ‘Get Excel Content’, then we'll link PowerPoint shapes in my template slide to the repeating section column submitted from Excel. The names of the repeating section items from the Excel table are derived from the repeating section table name plus an underscore plus the column name. In this example, the table name is r_ RS_catalog. I want this shape to be updated with the product name, which is named item name. I select that column name from the drop-down and click ‘Add or Update Link’. This links the shape to the first column in the Excel table. I'll also link description, and then also price. You can also link content to items not in repeating section tables; for example, I could add a link for something like customer name, which is the same for all section copies.

Now that I'm done designing my section template, I'll create the repeating section. I'll select my template slide, then choose the section from the select repeating section drop-down, and click ‘Create Section’. The slide is marked as a repeating section and associated with the selected Excel table. If you're going to have multiple slides in your section template, indicate the number of slides here. For example, if you were going to create a report that summarizes the status of all of your customers, you could have an overview slide, a detail slide, and a financial slide for each customer, and you would enter a three here. Reset sections removes any copies of the slide templates. Do this before making edits to your template slides so you don't inadvertently modify the copies.

Now that our repeating section is set up, we can update the content at any time. We simply click ‘Submit’ in Excel, then click ‘Update’ in PowerPoint. The add-in deletes any prior section slide copies, makes new copies of the slide templates—one for each row—and updates the content. I'll then add 30 rows of new data. For example, you could import new data for the next catalog. You can also sort, filter, and use the auto-hide rows feature. Then ‘Submit’, then ‘Update’. We can see the 30 slides have been updated. The previous example only updated text content, but repeating sections can also update images and tables in PowerPoint. This example contains data for three sections but has six items for each section. To show you the end result, I'll submit from Excel and then update in PowerPoint. We can see that it updates two text items, three images, and a table on each of the three slides.

Next, I'll explain how to set up each of the content types. The content type is indicated by a label directly above the column. These are the seven valid content type labels. The first two columns are text. Text is the default content format; if there is no label, then the content type is text. Text can appear anywhere in your Word document and can be formatted any way you want. The next column is HTML content, which only works in Word and will not work in PowerPoint.

The next three columns are three different methods of updating images. The first is an in-cell image, meaning that you place the image within the cell; you can also use Excel's image formula to make the image appear from a URL. Second, image URL inserts the image directly into your Word or PowerPoint document; the URL must be publicly accessible and avoids large transfers from Excel. The third, image name, contains the name of an image in Excel. For example, this cylinder image is named r_cylinder, which matches the shape name in the column.

The table content type transfers a named range or data table and inserts it into the PowerPoint document. For example, this range is named r_cylrange. In this example, the ranges are formatted as flex tables, so they have a similar formatting appearance in Word and PowerPoint as they do in Excel.

The type label of the last column is ignore; it will not be transferred to PowerPoint. Ignore columns can be used for reference or calculations.

I then ‘Submit’ the content to PowerPoint. In PowerPoint, on the link tab, I click ‘Get Excel Content’, and then I will link the items. I'll link the section number to this text shape. Note that the items I want to link to start with my Excel table name—in this case, r_RS_shapes—and end with the Excel table column name. Next, I'll link the shape name to this text shape. I'll insert the image in cell and place it here, then the image URL and the image name, and I'll link the table shape to the info table column. I'll click ‘List all Linked Shapes’ to ensure my shapes are linked to repeating section items, and they are. Now my items are all linked.

I will next make the slide a repeating section template. I'll click ‘Create Section’. Now I will click ’Update Document’, and we can see that the add-in created the template copies and updated all of the content.

Next, try the examples in the sample content documents, see the repeating section sheet, and then set up repeating sections in your own documents. Thank you.