PowerMerge gets the data used to merge presentations from a workbook created in Excel. To merge a presentation you have to "associate" it to a workbook stored on your disk. The workbook is called a "data sheet" inside PowerMerge.
Working with data sheets
Use the ribbon tab to operate with data sheets inside PowerPoint. The first section of the ribbon contains the following four buttons:
Associate |
Click on this button to select the data sheet to associate with the current presentation. |
Open |
Click on this button to open the associated data sheet in Excel. |
Clear |
Click on this button to clear the association with a data sheet. |
Create |
Click on this button to create a data sheet containing all fields used on the current presentation. |
Structure of data sheets
Any workbook can be used as a data sheet, with the following rules:
| 1. | PowerMerge only uses the first sheet in the workbook (the first tab). |
| 2. | Fields should be placed in the first row of the data sheet. Fields are case insensitive and their order is not important. |
| 3. | Image fields contain the filename of the image to use for each record. Images should be located on the same folder as the data sheet. |
| 4. | PowerMerge will ignore columns after the first column with an empty value in the first row. |
| 5. | Values for each field should be placed in the following rows below the field name. |
| 6. | PowerMerge will ignore rows after the first empty row. |
Example of a data sheet
The following screen capture shows the data sheet used in the Conditional fields example shows the rules mentioned above graphically:
A sample data sheet
See also